


A Tide of Ice and Blood (Beta)

by RonnieWriting



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Game of Thrones Fusion, Eventual Romance, I don't know how graphic its gonna get so the "explicit" is a safety net for now, Multi, but i dont want to catch any of my readers off guard, but not really game of thrones, don't start hoping for dragons, if you can get through game of thrones then this is probably a safe story for you, major cw and tw throughout, probably, some warnings might not apply in the end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 37,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23559538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieWriting/pseuds/RonnieWriting
Summary: For years, The North and The South have been gambling with lives and blood, the city of Aren Fell was once the bond that kept the land together... until allegiances were washed away with deceit, leaving all but pain and ruin for each of the families.(NOT THE FINAL STORY, THIS IS THE BETA VERSION AND HAS BEEN SCRAPPED AND REWRITTEN!!)
Relationships: Anna/Hans (Disney), Anna/Kristoff (Disney), agnaar/iduna
Comments: 37
Kudos: 21





	1. Where Birds Sing

He may have been strong, but the way in which the arms at his sides pushed him reminded him that he wasn’t in The North anymore. One hand came roughly to shove at the back of his neck like he was a dog, a hound, a mutt,  _ feral _ \- they had used that term for him a few times. His breath came out ragged and laboured, his vision a blur of stone and the hall rug beneath him that never seemed to end.

“I can’t wait to see what the queen does with him, the wall hasn’t seen a fresh body in months.” one of the men was speaking to the other. They probably thought he was alien to the common tongue.

The other replied, his accent much more rough, “Maybe she’ll have him led around the city with his cock tied to a horse.”

“She’s done that?”

“Aye, once. She’s been waiting to do it again for some time now.”

They pushed him around a corner, he was barely able to turn his head to catch a fleeting glimpse of the walls before the hand on his nape thrust his head back down. 

“Gods know this fucker deserves more than a sword through his throat.”

They forced him down another hallway before they practically  _ lifted _ him up a flight of stairs. The hand on his neck slacked and he was met by the gaze of two stoic, unshifting guards. He straightened slightly and though he towered over all these figures, he’d never felt weaker.

Both the guards moved to open the twin doors between them, their faces both covered, swords at their hips. They were armored too, hard leather that was painted deep green and purple, shining plated metal covering chests and shoulders and stomaches all printed with the shape of foxes.

What awaited him over the threshold was a large hall, lined with looming columns, torches and coloured banners proudly featuring the silhouette of a golden fox. There were few people in the room. A row of similarly armed men in front of both lines of stone columns, behind those men, a few important looking people in expensive looking clothing crowded around, watching him.

He was pulled into this room and towards the base of a raised platform where a row of three chairs stood, the middle one was noticeably more grand than the others, at the base of this stage knelt three men he knew too well. They were all stripped of overgarments as he was, left in little but a tunic and trousers- they were even without their boots. The hands shoved him to his knees at the foot of the platform where we made eye contact with his comrades. He let his eyes then shift to the balcony that lined both walls, archers in a row, drawn and aimed arrows at the few of them. He ceased to wonder as to why they didn’t bother with shackles. 

He heard a door open on one side of the platform a moment later, the collective eyes of the four men on the floor following the every step of the two figures that emerged.

The first was a tall, young man, his hair an ashy blonde and pushed back to reveal his sharp features. A thin nose with a slight ridge sitting in the middle of an otherwise incredibly precise face. His eyes were a crisp blue, piercing and fierce. He wore a high collared white shirt that was layered under a long sleeveless coat that was the colour of honey, making his features stand out even more. He was fastening the coat’s three centre-front closures as he entered. Behind him, a young woman stepped into the space. Her hair, a fiery red, pulled back in a complicated style, her dress long sleeved, structured sharp and strong, deep green, layered but far from reaching the floor even at her little height. Golden embellishments lined each of her sleeves and held a fold of fabric across her bodice. 

She passed the blonde man and made her way to the centre of the platform, in front of the grand chair. She did not sit. The man stood by her side. 

An older man shuffled past the men on the floor and stood on the steps of the platform. His robes were long and without the weight of royal status. 

He cleared his throat and gestured to the figures, “The Princess, Serving Lady of Aren Fell and Right Hand of the Queen, Anna Ardelle, and the Master of Mercy, Left Hand of the Queen, Ingar.”

The blonde man’s jaw twitched at his title but his stature was unwavering.

“Northerners.” The young woman all but spat at the men in front of her. She barely looked at their faces.

One of the guards that had dragged him in spoke up from behind him, “All found just outside Aren Fell, my lady.” 

Another guard spoke up as the ashy blonde crossed his arms behind his back, “Suspected to be gathering information on our city, our soldiers, my lady.”

“Planning an attack?” She asked.

He answered, “Likely so, my lady.”

The woman, the Princess as it were, took a step forward, off the level of the platform and onto the first step down. “Have you names?” she asked.

When none of the men did not immediately speak, the apparent ‘Master of Mercy’ nodded once and a guard kicked one of them in the back, his chin flying to collide violently with the first step.    
“You’ll all do well to remember how to respond to a question. Stupid as you all are, no doubt, you all must know the common tongue.” He said, pointing then to the man kneeling next to the body of his unconscious comrade. “Your name?”

“G-Glenn, my lord.”

Ingar smiled at this, the tangible fear in the man’s voice igniting something within him. He pointed to the next man.

“Luras, m’lord.”

Hee always knew Luras to be a strong man, his voice was free from any slight tremble. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t run from death- an admirable strength. And yet here he was, on his knees.

Ingar’s finger then fell on  _ him _ .

“Kristoff, my lord.”

Ingar’s finger retreated behind his back after waving a hand to the fallen man, like the unmoving form slumped against the polished step offended him. The same guard that delivered the fatal kick stepped forward and looped his arms around the man, pulling him up to reveal his mangled jaw and the bloody imprint on the step. He was pulled out of the room, back through the way they entered.

Anna, the Princess, spoke to the remaining men, “As the Queen is away for the time being, your lives cannot be promised. Ingar and I may declare your sentence but the blood of the North is only to be spilled before the Queen herself.” Her eyes flashed around the room.

Kristoff noticed her eyes were the same striking blue as Ingar’s. She turned then and climbed the single step that separated her from Ingar’s side, a flourish in her skirts.

Ingar spoke again, “Take them all to the dungeons,” he turned to the robed man who had introduced him, “Kai, see to getting a message to the Queen that she has a few ‘wolves waiting in chains for her knife.’”

The robed man bowed and shuffled away.

The same guards then grasped at the remaining men’s shoulders and pulled them to their feet. Kristoff’s eyes remained on the Princess until his body was rotated and pulled back out the twin doors, following the trail of blood drops.

…

“You think that we should just- kill the North men in cold blood?” Anna asked as she paced the room. 

“Death should fit the crime, Anna, it always should.” Anna looked to the woman in bed. Her face still sunken with the pallor that had taken to her for many years now. She remembers a time when the hair on her head wasn’t few and fading, it used to be thick and long, a deep brown that changed in the light of the seasons. Her eyes used to be brighter too. And yet, Anna always felt the strength in the woman’s words, behind the quake of age and chronic sickness. Her face reminded her of her sister, her heart skipped a beat in longing.

“And without the measure of crime? What then?” Anna asked. She couldn’t bring herself to sit on the edge of the bed, she knew all too well what it felt like to have the bed dip lower for her than it did for it’s eternal inhabitant, so she turned to the window. Though the room was on the ground floor of the castle, it had beautiful views over the city of Aren Fell. The capital temple, the grand market, the water of the fjord and the slope of the great mountains, it could all be seen from this one window, framed so delicately by the sturdy weaving of ivy that grew along the castle walls. Peering further down, one could lose the day to watching how the waves crashed against the great black cliff that the Castle of Aren Fell sat atop. The water shaped and carved it’s harsh impressions into the rock as it had for generations and would for many more.

“If no crime, why then put these men to death?” The woman asked. 

Anna turned back to her, “Because they are dogs of the North, they’re kin of the man who killed King Daniel.”

The woman’s eyes grew cloudy round the edges at the mention of that name.

Anna realised her mistake, “Sorry, I don’t know much of him. You never spoke of him and I-”

“He was a good man,” she didn’t let Anna finish, “a good King.”

“And so then why not avenge his death? Why not remind his men that we aren’t just bystanders to their feud with the south?!” Anna reasoned.

“Because Agn- because  _ your father _ would not.”

“If he were alive, surely he’d want nothing more than to avenge his own blood?”

The woman chuckled sadly, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you.”

The door to the room opened then, Ingar stepped in, behind him, Kai and a single guard.

“Anna,” Ingar resisted to meet the strangling glare of the worn woman in the bed, “a word?”

Anna leaned over to kiss the woman’s head softly, a frail hand coming to rest against her arm as she went to pull away.

“Think about what I said, Anna, dear.” She said steadily. 

Anna covered the hand with her own, “I will, mother. Rest easy, alright.” The woman nodded as Anna finally pulled away and followed Ingar out the door. Her mother’s handmaid, Gerda replaced her presence in the room. 

Ingar was still for a moment after the door closed. Anna placed a comforting hand on his arm before taking his hand and leading him further up the stairs. 


	2. Tainted Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter there is formatting I'm going to follow from here on out.  
> Blocks of italic text is a memory in the chapter- later I plan to write full chapters on past events and they won't be fully italicized but I'll let you know the year jump at the start of those chapters.  
> When speech is bold it means that the character is not speaking the common tongue- this will mostly always apply to the Northern characters.  
> And an ellipsis in paragraph breaks is a switch in POV if that wasn't clear.  
> :)

Once Ingar closed the door to his chamber behind him he let himself take a deep breath, drawing out the exhale. He took this moment to think back to the conversation just passed.

_“Death should fit more than crime, Anna,” he spoke to her as she finished reciting what was clearly her mother’s words to him, “should monsters be given the honour of fast death? Should we take men whose blood runs with nothing but evil and only cut their heads off, mount their bodies upon the wall?”_

_Anna stood to meet his gaze, “And you would rather us take what action? Let them all be stoned to death? Give them crimes befitting of theviery, rape, murder? These men-”_

_“You think that your sister would agree with you? You know as well as I do how much she cares about rebuilding the Ardelle name.”_

_Anna’s face fell then. He had aimed for a nerve. Ingar never missed that target._

_She retreated to a chair. He could see the telltale signs that she was holding herself back from crying._

_Ingar stepped to her and met her eyes again with his knee coming down to rest by her foot. “You have a soft heart, Anna.” He covered her hand with his own, “But The North knows no such softness.” He raised a hand to trace the edge of her face, mapping across the familiar freckles of her skin._

_She smiled sadly, but nodded, “Fast death is too honorable. But we cannot brutally execute men who have done no perceivable crime.” Anna stood again, crossing over to a window. Night was falling faster now that summer was drawing to a close. “I’ll give notice to Kai and the Keeper that these men are to be put into service for this family.”_

_Ingar grinned, “Manual labour, domestication and a life of service for those who would’ve otherwise killed them is much more befitting,” He moved to stand behind her then, both of his hands falling on her shoulders, “and merciful.”_

No sooner had he rid himself of his coat, tossing it to the back of a chair, he heard the approach of footsteps. They stopped only for the rhythm to begin on the wood of the door. Loosening his cuffs as he crossed the room in a few strides, Ingar opened his bedchamber door, “Lord Robyn.”

The man across from him, draped in expensive silk, was a member of the Queen’s council. “To which of the new Gods do I owe thanks for such a visit?”

The man entered Ingar’s room and wasted no time in getting to the point. 

“Prayer won’t do much to aid you, Ingar. I know what your plans are.” He spoke very slowly, intentionally. 

Ingar’s expression remained stoic, “And what plans would those be?”

Ingar’s words were left unanswered as Lord Robyn took notice of his discarded coat. He picked it up, and shifted his words to it, “A symbol of your status- or perhaps the lack thereof.” The Lord turned to him, taking notice to the subtleties in his expression, “I’ve always thought it amusing that they strip you of your right to sleeves.”

Ingar took his coat then, “I have no use for sleeves anyways. I have nothing to hide.”

Lord Robyn crossed his arms behind his back, “I heard of the amendments to the fate of the Northmen in our Keep.”

Ingar smiled, “Word has never failed to fall onto your ears first. But your ears are correct, our Serving Lady, the Princess, has decided to grant them a merciful sentence.”

“Ironic as you are the supposed ‘Master of Mercy’ and to anyone in that hall it would appear that you were prepared to have them all slaughtered like lambs. Does your lonely title mean nothing to you?”

“You’d sooner call a wolf a _lamb_? It seems the years have muddled your-”

“The years have only let me see clearer...After all how much difference is there between a fox and a wolf?”

Ingar scoffed, “I’ll always be prepared to defend the honour of Aren Fell and the Ardelles. Northmen do not scare me, nor do the opinions of such _lambs_ \- as you said.” Ingar took a moment to roll his sleeves up his arms, “And as for my title, it’s a great honour to be named anything by the Queen and her sister.”

Lord Robyn hummed, “So it would seem.”

Ingar was persistent, “What plans would I have? I’m a simple man, blessed with honour that my blood would deny. I have no rights.”

“That may be so but you are certainly not simple.”

Ingar’s jaw tensed with offense but he remained collected, “Shall I accept that as a compliment?”

“If it pleases you.” The Lord then bowed slightly and turned to the door. He turned his head over his shoulder so that Ingar would catch his words, “To sleeve a bastard is to render no man above suspicion, Gods be good.”

… 

The dungeons were cold and damp. Kristoff looked up from his place on the floor, his back pressed stiff against a steel column, to the body that hung on the wall. It was still in chains, _as if he’d ever move again_. Glenn and Luras sat opposite of him, just out of arm and leg reach- purposefully, of course. His ears echoed with those same sharp words they used on him and the other men, although he didn’t know if it was just the ringing in his head from how it was all but kicked in.

Glenn was rocking back and forth, murmuring what sounded like a string of prayers. Luras shook his head and sighed, they spoke in their mother tongue, who knew what ears were lurking around just out of sight.

“ **Pray the others are safe in the trees right now.** ” Luras said to him, his voice was gruff and tired, a dried string of blood still falling across his lips from his nose. The guards had been less than careful with them on their journey to the cells. 

Kristoff himself could feel the split across his lip where a common tongued curse landed him a particularly harsh knock in the face. “ **I’m sure they are, if they are not in here with us already.** ”

Luras shook his head, “ **What if the bastards already got to them? What if they passed them no chance and lopped their heads off?... I should’ve known better than to bring my own** **_children_ ** **with me on a mission like this.** ”

Kristoff looked again to Glenn who was now tracing the bruises across the visible expanse of his arms with his wide eyes. He cleared his throat, “ **It’s an honour for me as much as I’m sure it is to them. My own mother knew it could cost me my life but she also knew it would prove to the Gods that my devotion to The North is undying, if nothing else.** ”

Luras nodded in understanding but not acceptance, “ **Gods, be good to them.** ”

Glenn spoke up then, “ **This is not our Gods’ land. The new Gods know nothing of our honour**.”

Kristoff hummed before he got an idea. He looked around the dungeon, listened for any faraway footsteps. “ **We can get out of here, but it’s not going to be easy**.”

Glenn perked up all too quickly, he practically started buzzing. 

“ **Shut the fuck up, you halfwit** ,” Luras snapped at Glenn, “ **or we won’t fucking take you with us**.”

Kristoff gently shook his wrists, listening to the weight of the chains as they rattled, “ **Hear that?** ” Luras grasped his own chains in his hands. “ **I’m sure we can break these chains with enough force, they aren’t forged for Northmen**.”

“ **A-and if we can’t?** ” Glenn asked.

“ **You can stay here and think about all the things that blonde fucker will do to your corpse if you prefer** .” Luras turned back to kristoff then, “ **When do we do this?** ”

Kristoff closed his eyes, trying to remember the colour of the light that cast in through the large windows in the hall. He’s sure it was a reddish-pink. Kristoff opened his eyes, “ **In an hour or so**.”

Glenn went back to muttering a string of prayers, Luras even joined him in a few of them.

Kristoff thought about his mother as the time passed. He thought about their companions still outside of Aren Fell. The seasons were getting colder, he distracted himself with forming plans in his mind of how they’d acquire furs and clothing- _and weapons_ \- once they were out of this damned city… if they got out.


	3. Escape the Fox Gate

Elsa looked up from her place on the bed, one of the Southgaard Stewards was knocking at the door. Elsa was in a state of half dress, readying for bed, so her handmaiden, Marion, cracked the door. The Steward offered the note to her, “A note from the Princess Anna in Aren Fell.”

Marion closed the door then and passed the rolled parchment to the Queen. It was sealed with a wax stamp, the imprint of her family sigil staring up at her.

Elsa took the note and unfurled it.

Dearest sister, 

Ingar and I have found ourselves with Northern dogs in our Keep. We have decided on the route of mercy and granted them the honour of serving our family. However, upon your arrival and by your word their fate will be set eternally by chain or by blade. 

Mother is doing fine but I fear what this winter will bring to her.   
I await your return to Aren Fell with an aching heart,

Your sister, Anna

Elsa frowned at the letter and stood. Speaking to the Steward through the door, “Have my carriage and men readied, I need to return to Aren Fell.”

“At once, my Queen.” came the reply, followed by fading footsteps.

Marion assisted Elsa back into her skirts but she forwent her fancy blouse in favour of wrapping herself in one of her big fur coats, her modesty well kept.

Elsa made her way, two of her Knights in toe, through the halls of the Southwake Castle. Large doors opened for her and she stepped into the Great Hall. The deep fireplace behind the head table was unlit as the south winds were yet to chill but the room was still aglow with light by hanging candle chandeliers, ready for its diners. 

At the head table sat the most prominent members of the Southgaard family; in the centre Henrik and Sofie, the Lord and Lady of The South. Next to Henrik, their oldest son and heir, Randar, the second oldest Southgaard son, Arren, was seated next to their mother. The other eleven Southgaard sons sat along one very long table, the rest of the noble members of the house seated on similar tables that ran the length of the hall. On the walls, between each window, hung the Southgaard banner- A snowy lynx on a grey background, the shape of waves creeping up from the bottom of the flag.

They all stopped their jovial chattering when they noticed Elsa’s presence in the room. Henrik stood up from his seat, the rest of the hall following suit, he gestured to the empty chair between himself and his wife. 

Henrik, like all his sons, had burning red hair, a genetic trait that seemed to go back generations, only missing his own late father, Randar (of whom his first son was named after), therefore nicknamed “The White Wave”. 

Before Henrik could speak a word of welcome to her, she addressed him, “apologies, my Lord, but I must return to Aren Fell.”

“Is everything alright?” He asked her. The glint in his eye turned cold.

“There are Northmen in my Keep, I must see to their trial and justice at once.”

There was a light murmuring at the mention of Northmen but Henrik soon quietened it with a raised hand, “Of course, your grace.” Henrik stepped around his table to Elsa’s side, “I hope we can continue our plans in due time?”

Elsa looked around the hall, her eyes passing over each of the Southgaard sons, “On my word. I will not forget your patience my Lord.”

Henrik nodded, “Your word is good, your grace. We’ll see you off.” 

Elsa cut them off before all thirteen of his son’s could move, “No need for such formalities, proceed with your dinner.”

Henrik smiled and took Elsa’s hand, pressing a respectful kiss to her skin.

  
  


Elsa sighed at the hands that ran over her arms, they pushed the fur coat off down her shoulders, her skin tingling in the cool air of the carriage. Marion’s lips wandered down Elsa’s chilled skin, she sighed, content but her occupied mind wandered. 

She didn’t like leaving Anna with Ingar for too long but she knew that she had to let her sister grow into her own assertiveness.    
She’d known Ingar her whole life, longer than Anna, her own mother’s contempt for the boy undoubtedly encouraged similar feelings. She remembers a point at which Iduna couldn’t even bear to hear his name, its sound, an echo to pain she’d never outgrow. It got to the point where Anna- eversweet and caring Anna- would call him by a different name. 

Elsa tried to recall the name but the wandering of Marion’s fingertips up her shins from under her skirt wiped any trace of it from her mind.

…

Kristoff peered around a corner, his perception of time proving right as young moonlight filtered in through the windows and bounced off the blades of passing watchmen. 

Breaking out of the dungeon was only the first step, as relatively simple as it was. They had managed to quickly take out a guard, Luras had been sure to see that it was quick and quiet, and raid him- Kristoff clutched a small knife, Luras, the guard’s shortsword and Glenn held a ring of keys in his fist so they wouldn’t make a sound.

Once the passing guard had moved on, Luras wordlessly signaled for the men to follow him down a hallway.

This proved the bigger challenge. None of them remembered which way they came in, Kristoff could still feel where brash fingers tore at the skin of his neck. Every corridor was lined in rugs, torches, banners, it made no difference. They did however avoid any more ascending staircases as it seemed obvious that the ground level would have more than one entrance.

However, Kristoff soon found himself separated from the others as approaching footsteps kept him from crossing a broad hallway. He stayed on the side across from them but the footsteps started to continue stepping in his direction, Kristoff panicked and hastily opened the closest door, jumped inside and shut the door behind him as quietly as he could.   
He listened closely to pick when the footsteps would pass him so he could get the fuck out of there and leave- but two things stopped him.

The first was that the footsteps didn’t leave, they turned into two voices, literally standing between him and his comrades.

The second was the little voice that spoke up behind him.

“Who are you?” 

Kristoff swung around, knife turning his knuckles white in his grasp, but he faltered at the source of the voice. Before him was a tiny, aged woman, sitting up in her bed. Her eyes, though tired, were blown wide in shock. She shifted, shaking at the sight of his stature and the knife in his fist. 

She went to open her mouth but he held his hands up, “Don’t scream, please. I won’t hurt you.”

She seemed to relax a little at that but she asked again, “who are you?”

“My name is Kristoff. I-” where was the point in lying to an old woman? “I’m from The North.” he said.

“The North? You must be one of the men- or rather you were one of the men- in our Keep.”

“Yes.” Kristoff stepped away from the door, looking around the room. There wasn’t much furniture, an armoire, the bed and a little chair. The room itself was just as bare, the door he came through and a single window. She had said  _ our keep _ like she held some ownership- but surely a woman with such a claim would be treated to better quarters than  _ this _ .

The corners of her lips turned up a little as she looked at him, “I’ve always known the Northmen to be large but you must be some kind of half- _ giant _ . And you needn't worry about my screaming, dear, my voice is only clinging to my throat by a thread.”

Kristoff smiled slightly but was quickly reminded by the matter at hand as a voice outside the door raised for a moment before being calmed by the other.

The woman spoke again, “What is a Northmen doing this far south?”

Kristoff turned back to her, he moved past her to examine the window, it looked  _ just _ big enough for him to fit through if he had to, “I can’t tell you exactly but I- we’re looking for someone.”

“Someone?” she pressed.

“Yes, but I-... What’s your name?” He stopped looking at the window, the hinge looked easy enough to bust, the creeping ivy maybe strong enough to hold him-  _ at least for a while _ .

“Iduna Ardelle.”

“The Queen Mother?” 

She nodded. 

Kristoff heard the pair of footsteps and voices fade away with promise. He jumped over to the door, pressing his ear to the wood only for it to open in front of him, Luras and Glenn bursting in and slamming the door after them.

“ **We’re fucking trapped, Kristoff, they saw us!** ” As Luras said this Kristoff could hear the pounding of heavy feet come right to the door followed by yelling and the force of the door as the guards on the other side tried to push it open.

“ **Who the fuck is** **_that_ ** **?!** ” Glenn shouted at the woman in bed who was now shaking terribly at the sudden commotion. 

Before Kristoff could assure them she was no threat they were shouting over his thoughts. Luras shouted back as he pressed all his weight back into the door with Kristoff, “ **Who fucking cares who the bat is, what if she screams?!** ”

“ **Does it matter? They already know we’re here!** ”

Iduna reached beside her bedside, and Glenn jumped into split second action. 

She called out to them in vain, “ **_wait-_ ** ” but it was too late.   
  


In one moment, Glenn had taken the shortsword from Luras, lept over to her bedside and slit her throat with the blade.

Her blood tumbled down her worn neck and she fell back against the headboard, lifeless. Kristoff let out a shout and rushed over, elbowing Glenn aside to look at her. He noticed what was just in her hand- the thing she had reached for- it was a little, bound book. Kristoff took it, shoving it in the back of his trousers. 

In another moment the door burst open, Luras couldn’t hold them any longer.   
Kristoff wrenched the window open but Glenn pushed him aside and tried to scramble out. Kristoff followed, the sounds of Luras being struck down in the room, the soundtrack to their escape. Kristoff grabbed onto the ivy for his life, making quick work of climbing across to a ledge that he didn’t see from the window.    
But Glenn wasn’t as lucky, he moved too quick and fell back off the castle wall. Kristoff could only hold his breath as the guards in the room looked out the window to catch the splash of Glenn’s body in the fjord below.


	4. With the Dawn

Anna sat stoic on the throne-like chair. Before her, the pulped, bloody heap of a body that belonged to the one of the Northmen. One of the Northmen that killed her poor, sick mother. Her guards had struck him down in her mother’s little room, right at the foot of the bed that had become her tomb in a second, her linen sheets stained violently, now her shroud. Ingar’s hand hung uselessly next to his empty scabbard, his sword resting, spent, still, between Anna’s fingers. 

She knows she went back on her own words, that Northern blood is only to be split in front of the Queen but seeing that man’s face- seeing the same face she had granted mercy to only hours before he and his kind killed an old woman in her bed- she had no other choice.

Anna had let them all watch, all the members of the Queen’s court, as she took the sword from Ingar’s hip and came down upon him, his blood decorating her. 

And once he was deformed enough, his skin in shreds, his face a beaten shape, bits of unnamed flesh sprinkled around him- once he was dead _enough_ \- Anna had taken the sword again and slowly ascended the steps.

A moment passed where no one spoke. Before Ingar could do so, Kai had already called for the mess to be scrapped off the floor.

“Lord Robyn.” Anna started, startling everyone in the room. She stood, sword following her, and moved away from the chair, “You’re certain the other two men fell into the fjord?”

Lord Robyn nodded, “Yes, my Lady. The accounts of the guards are sure that they saw a body hit the water.”

“One body.” 

“My Lady, I doubt that-”

“ _One body_. Which means,” Anna handed the sword to Ingar who admired the blood quietly, “one dog lives.”

Lord Robyn nodded and bowed his head to her, “I’ll see to it that scouts are sent around the city, my Lady.”

Gerda rushed to follow Anna as she then made her way out of the room, stepping through the bloody puddle on the floor. She called over her shoulder, “I want that man fished out of the fjord so he can rot on the wall.”

  
  


The somber music bounced off of the walls of the mountain. The voices of the people of Aren Fell rising in song as the Queen mother’s body was carried to a ship. Anna stood just in the water, Ingar behind her on the rocks. 

Anna looked away from the sight of her mother, casting her eyes to where she could see a number of armed guards patrolling through the crowds of people, along the shore line, and going back through the city. She turned further and looked up at the rocky cliff face that Aren Fell castle stood atop. Without trouble, Anna picked out her mother’s window, ivy broken around it; she let her eyes fall back to the water. Ingar’s expression in her peripheral was cold, he had never harboured a connection with the woman but she was certain that there was still something emotional in his eyes.

She did wish that Elsa made it back in time to put their mother to rest but their ways wouldn’t have it. Death committed in haste and hate demanded immediate rest. There were only two Gods now. They were day and night, land and sea, _life and death_ \- both gave and took, that was the way.

As Anna turned again, the blood that stained her dress leaked into the water around her. 

_ “When I was twenty-two, Lord Randar married me to Prince Daniel.” Iduna lifted Anna higher up into her arms.  _

_ “Twenty-two? Papa says he’ll marry me before I’m fourteen!”  _

_ “Does that make you the daughter of an old maid?” The woman laughed as she took the little redhead along the open wall of the castle. _

_ “Yes!” _

_The two of them looked down then to watch as two fair haired children circled each other with wooden swords in the castle courtyard. Even from the height she was at, Anna could hear the booming voice of her father as he criticised their every move. “Don’t let your opponent in, don’t let them see what your next movement is- Yes, Elsa, good!” He moved between the children after Elsa had struck the boy’s side, “Ingar, remember now,” He straightened the child’s shoulders, “you mustn’t only strike fast but true.”_

_Anna looked back to her mother as the children started fighting again. Iduna’s face had turned sour as she looked at them all down there. It quickly turned soft again as she met her little girl’s eyes, “Don’t worry, little fox. You’ll get to swing a sword when you’re old enough.”_

_“A real one?”_

_“Let's hope it's only once or twice.”_

Anna watched as her mother’s body was laid upon a wooden raft, a floating pyre. Ingar handed her a flaming torch. She waded out through the water and lit the raft on fire, giving it a hard push out into the water.  
It soon lit up in bright flames, its glow enhanced by the glint of the early sun. Anna was sure she would’ve believed the whole world was on fire had she not been standing in the cold water. By then the salty water had washed out the blood from the bottom of her gown, it was now rolling back behind her with the tide.

… 

When Kristoff woke up he didn’t know where he was. There was the sound of a barely crackling fire near him, the feel of soft furs under him. He stirred and immediately went to clutch his head. Through the violent ringing in his ears he could hear heavy footsteps approach him. 

“Ye’r awake now?” a gruff voice asked from above him. 

He reached around him blindly for the knife but couldn’t find it anywhere. The voice didn’t come again. Kristoff’s brows furrowed as he finally fought through the sting in his temples and fully opened his eyes.

Looming above him was a giant man. Just by looking at him, Kristoff knew that he would be dwarfed by his enormosity. 

Kristoff pulled himself up to realise he had been laid across the hearth of a little stone house. He looked around him at the furs that decorated every surface, bundles of herbs hanging to dry from the rafters. 

The giant man moved again, closer to Kristoff. Kristoff instinctively held up his fists, ready to fight although he didn’t know if he’d last long against this man.

The man stopped moving, his thick breath landing against the scruff on Kristoff’s chin, it smelt of warm ale and rosemary. “I’m not lookin’ to fight ye lad,” The man stepped back slightly, “but I’ll warn ye that if ye wanna try, ye won’t be lastin’ long.”

Kristoff lowered his fists, murmuring what sounded like an apology, and finally took in the appearance of this strange man.

He had ginger hair that stuck out in every direction underneath a woolen hat that was edged in what looked like bear fur. His body was covered in modest clothing, several hides and pelts wrapping around him which only did to expand his size. But the most striking thing about this huge figure was his eyes- blue, and like two foggy windows into the snow. 

“You’re… blind?” Kristoff asked.

The man huffed and turned away from him then, “I prefer Ander if it’s all the same to ye. Ander Oaken.”

“What happened?” Kristoff asked, finally pulling himself up on his feet. 

“I was mauled as a lad by a bear and it-”

“No, I mean- how did I get here?”

Ander had gathered a heap of items and dumped them in Kristoff’s direction, “I came across ye when I was doin’ my last round of deliveries, see lad, I may be blind but I know these streets better than anyone. Ye were well spent and weren’t moving, just outta castle grounds.” 

Kristoff saw that the items consisted of familiar objects like the knife and the book but there was also a pair of boots and a woolen coat. “I don’t know who ye are but I do know that yer gonna freeze to death if ye leave with nothin’ on yer back.”

Kristoff pulled on the coat and boots, tucking the knife and book into one of the pockets safely, “You never asked for my name.”

Ander pushed open the heavy door of his house, “I don’t think I want to know it. Any common man who’s carryin’ a soldier’s knife won’t be keepin’ his name or his head much longer. Thank the Gods there’s still some heart left in me or I’d be savin the Queen’s time by takin’ yer head meself.”

Kristoff followed the man, “Thank yo-”

“Don’t thank me, thank the God that gives, lad. If you never see me again, consider it payment enough.”

Kristoff passed through Ander’s door, stopping only to give the man’s hand a half-shake before making his way through the city, keeping his head down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new characters everywhere!  
> I hope anyone who is reading is enjoying the story bc its pretty hard to write a story like this where fluff is few and far between and its got a lot going on.  
> thanks to anyone who's sticking through it so far, I really appreciate it!!!


	5. The Bough Breaks

Ingar couldn’t bear to touch the water with its salt, the blood, warm with the heat of the flaming mass drifting away- none of it was his concern. Iduna was never his mother by any stretch of the word. 

But Anna  _ was  _ his. She was very much the only person he had. And it was becoming all too clear to him that family was beginning to drop like flies.

So Ingar stood there, dressed in the same black as she was, waiting for her to wash her grief in the waves. And when she was done, he placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her back to the castle, still not touching the water. People bowed along the way, not for him of course, never for him. 

As they got further away from the shore’s edge he couldn’t help but feel the weight of that woman and her life’s effect on him be distanced too. Though some things would never change.

He remembered every single time she’d catch him playing with her daughter and rip him away from her. When she’d try to exclude him from the family table in vain, only to then receive the backhand of her husband. She had tried to drown him in the clear waters of the Winterwoods of Aren Fell when he was barely three years old, Elsa watching as she did so. 

And then Anna had come. Blazing hair and eyes like his own- a sister,  _ his _ . She grew up under Elsa and he, the fire between the snow, without a doubt the heart of the broken Ardelle family. Iduna resigned herself to the fate that was seeing his face everyday it seemed. Sneering down to him, and when he was bigger than her she’d sneer up at him.

Finally they made it to the castle steps and Anna turned out of his hold, addressing those that had crowded there to pay her their respect. 

Ingar thought Anna was nothing like her mother. She was the reason he was still alive, his blood protection beyond his father’s death. Anna’s love was never something he had to ask for, her heart was strong enough for the world.

But now, as he looked to her, he saw the walls that were beginning to close around that boundless heart. 

She had finally been broken. Ingar had spent his maturing years waiting for this moment to come. When his sweet sister would finally stop trapping and releasing little animals, when she’d stop sleeping as soundly as she did. And now that her sheltered shell had shattered- he wasn’t sure what exactly to think or feel.

“...and I promise to all of you,” Anna’s voice continued to raise as she addressed her people, “as your Serving Lady, Princess and Right Hand, that any Northmen beasts left among our city will be strung by their fingers, alive, on The Wall.” Anna’s hand pointed to the wall in question, its purpose already being filled with the two human-shaped sacks of flesh and rotting matter that hung there, “We’ll always have room for them. And as they squirm and thrash, our stones of justice will crater their unholy skin,” A fierce cheer erupted from the growing crowd and Ingar smiled, “and let the rain of the Gods melt their skin from their bones we’ll and feed what’s left to the beasts of the Winterwoods!”

And with the last powerful, approving call from the crowd to push Anna up the stairs, they both retreated back within the heavy doors of the castle. Once those doors were closed, Anna let herself fall against him.

“I wish Elsa was there to say goodbye with us.” She said sadly.

Ingar thought of Elsa in a similar way to Iduna. Her hair was almost the same white-gold as his- but that was where their similarities ended (apart from the love they both harboured for Anna). Elsa and Ingar were raised to hate each other. Iduna made sure that her daughter would carry on her hate and in no time, Elsa could easily mirror the sneer of her mother when he was around. For the first time in forever, he wondered how she would react. After all, a dead mother and possible guilty Northman on the loose had already turned Anna into something new.

Ingar found himself frowning again, “She’ll be back soon, I’m sure of it.” 

He started leading her up the main staircase but she held back, “I should have listened to you, Ingar. I should have let you swing the sword then and there.”

Ingar’s eyes softened, “It seems you are more deserving of the title ‘Master of Mercy’ than I am. You did deliver the final blow after all.”

Anna nodded, similar self deprecating notions on her mind. Ingar succeeded in leading her up the stairs. 

When they arrived in the Great Hall Anna laughed softly, “I guess I’ll never have to call you by a different name in front of anyone again.”

Ingar and her had stopped in the middle of the room. The calm morning light sept in through the great windows that rose the length of the wall behind the three empty chairs. It was serene, the particles of dust in the light falling like the snow that was on its way.

“Do you remember what you used to call me?” Ingar asked.

Anna pondered for a moment but shook her head, “No, but I remember Kai making me practice calling you Ingar. I could never get the sound out right...”

Ingar let out a soft laugh, “Olaf. You called me Olaf.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all don't mind this chapter being a bit shorter than usual but I only wanted to focus on Ingar's thoughts for this one (+ my day today went downhill pretty quickly so I didn't feel like switching pov)
> 
> Let me know what you think!  
> Thanks for reading xx


	6. Half Mast

Even with the clothing that made him look less like an outsider, Kristoff was hard to miss moving through the the flocks of people. He did his best to keep his head bowed and shoulders hunched which would help him evade suspicion for sometime. But he didn’t know these streets and the longer he wandered them, the more conspicuous he became.    
He could hear the sounds of a mourning song in passing, it was where the crowds were gathering. And so to sell his conforming guise, he joined the mass.

Looking over the heads of the locals was no task so he gravitated to the edge of the passageway, where the looming brick limits of the city tapered off into black cliff that surrounded the fjord. It was a distance but he could see the shape of a crude raft and two prominent figures that stood nearby.    
Instantly, he recognised them as the two people that sent them to the dungeon, passed them a postponed death sentence. Kristoff watched as he saw the man ignite a torch and pass it to the woman. At this angle, it looked as if her hair was on fire too, like she was a flame embodied, flickering even as she moved into the water. After she set the raft alight, she lingered for a moment with the man before they both made their way back up the hill’s slope, his hand on her back. 

That body on the now blazing structure was without a doubt the Queen Mother. Kristoff’s hand instinctively went to the pocket where her little book was cradled. He didn’t know why he took it exactly, after all it only stood as evidence for his participation in unnecessary crime, but something about that now lifeless woman struck him. He couldn’t stop thinking about how the last thing she said was a word in Northspeak.

_ “Maybe she was just well educated in the tongue…” _ he thought.  _ “After all, a woman of her age must’ve been around when there was a lesser feud between the regions.” _

The redhead and the blonde grew closer to his spot, he didn’t run, but gratefully joined the sweeping bow of the people around him as it hid his face from sight.

Once upon the steps, the Princess began talking. After a couple of words for her mother, she turned her tone to one of prestigious aggression.   
Kristoff fought the bile rise in his throat at the sight of the two hanging bodies on the wall as the redheaded woman pointed to them in emphasis. Anger replaced the horrid feeling in his gut, but there was also an amount of relief as he noted it was only two bodies.  _ The others were still unfound _ . 

The woman continued to promise how once they found  _ him _ they’d subject him to such brutal death, “...and let the rain of the Gods melt their skin from their bones and we’ll feed what’s left to the beasts of the Winterwoods!”

One last cheer from around him erupted, prompting the two to take the remaining steps back into the castle bounds. As the woman turned, he was sure he saw the glimmer of something terribly familiar cast across her features.

The doors shut but the horde remained. Kristoff backed up slightly through the gaps of people until he was distanced from the concentrated area. 

Another important looking man had begun giving instruction to the people about how they should keep their eyes out for “... suspicious and foreign figures…” but to ensure that if they found  _ him _ or any other Northerner, they should bring him to the foot of “...the just sword.” 

  
As Kristoff stepped back, almost past the mouth of the maze of streets that made up the city, he felt his back collide with a body.

“Gods, watch it, you overgrown-” Kristoff spun around to meet the face of the voice, “ _ fuck _ .” It was a young man, he couldn’t have been older than 17, with a mop of hair that was a muddy sort of copper. He was wearing a tan (or was it permanently stained) peasant shirt tucked into a pair of shabby trousers that stopped above his ankles. He looked up at Kristoff in a sort of wonder, “When they say big, they really mean it, eh.”Kristoff grumbled slightly but pushed past him, "Hey wait!"

Kristoff’s jaw tightened, “Look kid, I don’t want any trouble.” He tried to move around the boy but he mirrored his movements, keeping him in place. 

“It’s too late for that,” Kristoff finally got past the kid with a shove, but he was followed, “ever heard of overstaying your welcome?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kristoff huffed. He didn’t want to hurt the boy but if he was going to tell everyone that he-

“You’re a Northman aren’t you. The one that killed-” 

Kristoff quickly spun around on his heel and in one accurate motion, grabbed the boy by the fabric of his shirt, pulled him into an empty alley, and pinned him up against the wall. Kristoff kept his voice hushed but stern and threatening, “Listen here, I’m nothing but a man trying to get out of this forsaken city. But if you-”

“I saw you leaving my father’s house this morning,” he tried to grasp at kristoff’s solid grip, “and you aren’t his usual... type _and_ _I know_ you aren’t from anywhere ‘round here.”

Kristoff dropped him but remained in place, looming over him, “If you tell any-”

The boy stuck his neck up as far as it would go, “You think I’m about to go around telling everyone that my father harboured a criminal? If I wanted him dead, I’d sooner smother him in his sleep than see him on The Wall.” There was a slight sneer in his voice. Kristoff took a step back at that, falling against the opposite wall of the alley. “My name’s Svavar Oaken. And I like you being in my city as much as you do, I’m sure,” The boy stood up straighter, meeting Kristoff’s slumped height, “I’ll get you out of here.”

… 

“And if the young Princess doesn’t want to marry me, what then, father?” Hans asked. His father, Henrik, was staring into the empty, fireless hearth. The midday sun was clouded through the windows as the changing season brought more and more cold rain to The South but Henrik had been in the same place since the Queen left Southwake.

Henrik scoffed, “Want has little to do with it, son. Her sister, the Queen has promised her to you.” He didn’t turn to look at Hans.

“Why me, I-” 

Henrik stood up from his chair with so much haste that it squeaked back against the stone floor, causing his ever-quiet mother to jump in her own chair. He finally met Hans’ eyes, “I wonder the same thing, son.  _ Why you _ ? Filip, Finn, Earling- even Johan would’ve made a better offer on our part- but no, the Queen asked for you.”

Hans’ two oldest brothers, Randar (second of his name after his grandfather and heir to the Lord of The North) and Arren entered the great hall, their great, spotted lynx pelt capes fanning out behind them. 

“Father,” Arren spoke up, the scorn on Henrik’s face faded, “You sent for me?” Arren was a handsome young man, features as striking as the rest of his brothers’, but unlike the rest of them, Arren prefered to keep his hair rather short.

“I’ve been waiting for you two to show up for hours, what were you both doing?” 

Randar huffed a chuckle, the few long strands of his ginger hair that escaped his efforts in tying back bounced around as his head moved, “Lars and Johan insisted that we go bear hunting with them, said it couldn’t wait till after the first light.”

Henrik hummed, side eyeing Hans.

“Is this about the Queen, father?” Arren asked. 

“It is. In order to secure the husband of  _ her _ choosing for her sister, the Princess, I have made the deal that promises the Queen’s hand to you, Arren.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do we think of the big reveal in the last chapter?! I'm very interested and love hearing all of your thoughts so share away!!!


	7. And it Feels Like I am Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a heads up, I went back and updated all the previous chapters so if you haven't gone back yet I'd suggest doing so- there's nothing major that I changed, mainly stylistic things and more descriptions but I think it helps.  
> As usual, bold text is used to signify another language being spoken, in this case, Northspeak x  
> enjoy!

The only real  _ dogs _ of The North were the wolves. They grew and bred bigger the further North one went, some pelts could cover a whole man so that none of his own skin would show.. Rumours would often claim that the wolves were so big beyond The North Mountain that one single pelt from a giant wolf- or Warg as they were called in The North- could cover a man and his entire family. But it would seem that any man who would go trying to cross the mountain would be lost.  _ Warg food _ .

Or so would happen in the stories that she used to tell her children. 

There was a fire that was still crackling when the woman stepped through the heavy curtain of furs and leathers, into the open air of Ahtohall. It was never easy to distinguish day from night this far North- maybe that was why they needed more than two Gods.

She made sure to pull her hood up before trudging through the snow to light a torch from the still-burning fire.

There were figures, dressed in the same pile of furs as her, that were seated around the fire. They all looked up to her as she passed through the circle. 

“ **Mother** ,” one stood up, towering over her in true Northern height, “ **there was finally word back from Northpass** .”

She almost dropped her flaming torch, “ **What word? Tell me, Járri.** ”

Járri’s arm came out ready to steady his mother but she stood as strong as any rock in a storm, “ **_They_ ** **saw them, from the Winterwoods, they were captured by Ironbarers.** ”

“ **All of them?** ”

Járri didn’t answer her but the compassionate cast of his eyes over her bitten face confirmed her worry. “ **Boil your water, mother. We’ll see to getting them out.** ”

She took his arm then with all the firmness of a mother, “ **You’re not going anywhere near those Winterwoods. I’ll not lose any more children to Southern snakes, you hear me,** ” She met each of her seated children with a stony gaze, “ **_None_ ** **of you are to set foot in the trees, let** **_them_ ** **watch.** ” 

And with that, she pushed back through the snow, holding the curtain aside for the torch so she could enter the house again.

The house was built from wooden logs, originally by her late husband but expanded by the hands of her growing children.  _ Warg food _ . It was a humble house, similar to those around it in the village, decorated on the outside by stretched reindeer hides to be tanned, on the inside, piles of reeds from the sea’s edge for weaving, dried wood and herbs that hung by expertly tied bundles from hooks in the walls and rafters. She made her way over to the stone hearth, bending to let the flames eat at the kindling she had arranged under the family’s only iron possession- the large cooking cauldron. She had filled it with fistfulls of snow in preparation for spell work. 

There were many traditions in The North that had withstood from dying even in the days of the last Southern invasion. One of them was never baring iron, another was the continued practice of spell work. She remembers how her own mother had taught her and her siblings the basics of the craft, protection spells, healing remedies,  _ curses _ . Water was usually used as the proxy, a carrier in it’s four different forms. Boiling it would fill it with her fury, adding sprigs of thyme for strength and luck, salt and then with a little blade made from bone, she carved a rune into the palm of her hand. The skin there had been scabbed over from all the runes she had drawn in her life, the newest one covering the last as beads of her blood seeped gently from the calloused plateau on her hand and trickled into the melting snow. The steam from the water also served as a medium for her work, it would carry her intention into the air and travel to her kin. 

It did to calm her too as she recited a few words to the brew,   
“ **May the Mother of fire and mercy, she of light and justice**

**Show my kin the way out of the foxes’ den**

**Bring them back, mother to mother,** ”

She took a breath, closing her eyes now and clasping her hands together, forcing the last drops of blood out between her fingers, **  
** “ **This, a prayer to women Gods, so to the Ghost of the mountain,**

**The white woman that commands the cold,**

**May she send her fury with the fire of the Mother,**

**And take a piece away from those who would do my kin harm.** ”

...

The air was sharp with a morning chill. Even through the thickness of the white fox pelts around her neck and shoulders, the sturdy layers of painted leather and embellished wool, Elsa could feel the early throw of winter creeping in the breeze. Her and her men were holding camp just past Tarnton Hold, the last Southern district and directly across from The Bear Woods- the mouth to The South, when a crow was brought into her tent on the arm of the Birdmaster. The journey from Southwake to Aren Fell took a month but with Anna’s words to keep her going, they would make it back in about twenty days.

“My Queen,” the Birdmaster held out a rolled parchment that was attached to the crows talon, “another message from Aren Fell.”

Elsa stood up from the table, leaving her smoked fish to cool in her stead. As she crossed the tent, peeking rays of sunlight flashed between the fabric walls and caught the gold of her crown as she moved. The crown was similar to the one her father, King Daniel, used to wear. Similar again to the one her step father, King Agnarr, but only in the respect that it featured her house sigil and was made from fine jewel and gold. 

  
Elsa remembered how she trembled in fear when she’d look at Agnarr’s crown. While her gentle father’s crown featured the majestic shape of foxes running around a delicate, woven, golden band, her step father’s crown boasted a snarling fox head, ears back and standing on the silhouette of a dead wolf.    
Her own displayed two golden foxes, their tails curling up behind them and the woven shape of wheat trailing behind. Elsa remembered when she had it made, how Anna had pointed at the foxes and said  _ “look, it’s us, Elsa!” _ and she had smiled and nodded, her grin widening as she saw the scowl on Ingar’s face.

Elsa took the paper with a gloved hand and spread its edges between her fingers. 

Dearest sister, 

I write to regretfully inform you that our poor, sick mother has been murdered in her bed. 

The hounds in our keep broke their chains and took her from us. We were able to bring a painful death to the one we were able to catch and we have strung his and his drowned acomplice’s body on the wall, a sight you will see when you return.

One still wanders the streets but I’m sure that by the time you receive this we will have found the last feral dog. Worry not, dear sister, I plan to keep him just-alive so that you can partake in your rights of justice and deliverance.

Your sister, Anna.

Elsa’s hand ran across the words again, this time noticing how the letters in some places were feathered, the ring of a droplet just discernible on the paper. “My mother is dead.” she said.

“Y-your grace?”

“Round up the men.” She said to her Steward, who bowed lower than usual before scurrying out the tent.

Elsa looked up at the Birdmaster, the crow on his arm cawed at her, relaying her sentiment in a way. She pushed past him easily, he bowed as she did so. It was still midmorning so her men were moving about their little camp, getting ready to hitch up the horses and continue North to Aren Fell. 

Elsa quickly found herself in the centre of them as they gathered before her. She held up the note between two fingers, “The Queen Mother has been murdered,” Elsa kept talking through the hushed gasps, their heads quickly lowering , “I will leave immediately North on horse alone with two bannermen and two knights of the Queen’s guard.” The nammed men stepped forward, “The rest of the camp will make its way back to Aren Fell in due time. Understood?”

“Yes, my Queen.” They all said, bowing deeply before resuming tasks with twice as much haste.

Marion, Elsa’s handmaid took her arm from behind then, “Shall I go with you, my Queen?”

She looked up at Elsa through those dark eyelashes of her’s, Elsa shook her head and turned on her heel back into her tent where her steward was already packing her trunks, “No, you’ll travel with the rest of the men.”

“But what if-” 

Elsa took her sword from its place atop the table, unsheathing it quickly and turning its end towards Marion. Her Steward stopped what he was doing but apparently thought better of it and swiftly hefted one of her cases out of the tent. “My mother has died,” she returned her sword to its hold with a little flourish, “my sister, in mourning,” Elsa looped the sheath through a belt and tied it around her waist- something that would usually be Marion’s job, “and you would question your place of importance among my riding guild?”

Marion shook with every breath Elsa took,“My Queen, I intended no offense I only wondered..,” she took a tentative step towards her, fingers outstretched and trailing up Elsa’s arm, “If you would need me  _ again _ on the road.” Marion’s hands wandered innocently then to her shoulders as the Steward reentered, she fussed with the drape of her cape across her back.

Elsa shrugged easily out of her Handmaiden's grasp, “I won’t need you again until you’re back in Aren Fell,” she turned around to face her then, a wicked smile at the corners of her thin lips, “I imagine I’ll be needing a hot bath after slaughtering the last Northmen scum in my city.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new POV and any developing theories you might be thinking! I'm nosy like that and love nothing more than hearing thoughts of my lovely readers so thanks in advance!!!


	8. A Closed Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a longer chapter so strap in x

Every time Hans would kick against the foam of a wave, it always kicked him back. Nothing in Hans’ life returned him as equally as the tide.

When he was dropped-or thrown, he never knew the difference- as a boy by his father, the floor would never ripple and cradle him like the water in the bath would.

He once tried to hug his brother Magnus but all that would hug him back was a pair of hands around his neck. He was five then. 

Hans remembers the way his mother once led him to this exact spot on the shore, his little hand encompassed in her fist. And she told him the story of how _“All noble born children of The South are born in the sea. I opened my legs for each of your brothers right here, their screams would mix with mine and the crash of the stinging salt water would name us both.”_ _He had looked up at her then, his heart pattering with the hope that maybe they were finally bonding._

That memory was always followed by the one that allowed him to commit the gritty taste of sand and salt water to vivid memory. It wasn’t the first time he had been pushed down, but it was when he realised the comfort he took in the shallow water. Laying there, no older than seven, feeling the bite of the salt water and not knowing if it was from the sea or his eyes. 

But now he had been given the opportunity to leave them all. The Queen wanted his hand for her little sister. He’d never thanked the Gods harder that day. 

He took a moment to deeply inhale the smells around him. A chilling scream sounded somewhere behind him. He had learnt to pay no heed to screams in Southwake, far less to the screams of women. 

After all- bear hunts and brotherly infighting only took up so much time for twelve brothers- even if seven of them were currently betrothed.

He opened his eyes from his reverie and with one more kick to send a few dark pebbles sploshing into the tide that came to kiss his feet again.

  
  


“Come in.” He said after there was a knock on his door.

He had made his way back into the castle with expected ease, no one would bother him on his walk through the halls. The only difference in their absent glances was perhaps the disbelieving thought that he’d be married to the Princess of Aren Fell soon enough. A title which would only put him second to his brother, Arren- who was never as cruel as the others despite being second oldest.

The door opened and his brother Lars stepped in. Lars was perhaps Hans’ only brother who considered him with a shred of indifference. He supposed that it was a matter of blood. And thank the Gods for blood.

Lars wasn’t alone, attached to the machine grip of his fingers was the arm of a little woman. She showed little restraint in following him in the room but upon seeing Hans, she stiffened.    
Lars sighed and held her arm out to him, “You want this one?” 

Hans considered her for a moment. Lars hated this game.

She was dressed in a creased and flimsy shift. The pathetic garment did nothing to hide the peaks of her nipples nor the shape of each of her ribs. Her hair was light brown-  _ good _ he thought,  _ I’m sick of redheads _ \- and he’d compare her eyes to tiny chips of amber… If he cared about her eyes that is. 

“Where’d you find her?” Hans finally asked, grinning at the way it turned Lars' face all the more fussed.

“It doesn’t matter to you, want her or not?” Lars dangled her limp wrist around like she was a ragdoll. 

The poor girl. She probably thought that when the broad, handsome, angular Lars took her arm and led her through the Southwake castle walls that she’d be spending a glorious moment being trapped in the cage of his arms and knees . She was probably one of the women who would whisper so stupidly that the quietest ones were always the  _ wildest _ . 

_ What would they then say of the invisible? _

_ She was about to find out.  _

Lars took no interest in bedding women (or men for that matter) but it seemed to be in his unspoken interest to hunt for little playthings for his little brother. Almost in a similar way to when they were younger. Lars was six years older than him but always enjoyed bringing him things like a domestic cat. It started as innocent things- sweets he was denied or little toys crudely made of hacked up sticks. Then, as they got bigger, it was little birds that Lars had pegged with rocks until they couldn’t fly away, crumbs to feed the mice under his floorboards and bear claws that he’d swipe from the skinning tables. And now it was women. Sometimes he’d pull them straight from the closing doors of his other brothers, other times they’d come from pubs or brothels or even just the streets. But Lars never knew Hans to have a preference, he wasn’t looking for  _ seconds _ .

For how it looked on the surface, Hans knew Lars enjoyed this unspoken ritual as much as he did.

As soon as Hans said, “Yes, I want her,” Lars had thrown her in his direction, “you’re sure you don’t want to join in?”

The girl had stopped then, something dancing in her eyes. To have two Southern brothers at once? Surely an honour, surely a story to tell the wide eyed and innocent gossiping girls she knew. She blushed at the thought but stepped back slightly to be closer to Hans’ bed nevertheless.

“I don’t care to play your game, Hans.” Lars said, his hand coming to rest on the edge of the door, his eyes followed the woman with no shame.

“You might care for it if you tried it.” Hans pressed, knowing full well how he was teasing the girl in the room. Letting such sweet, impure thoughts to flutter in her little mind a moment longer. “What about… just watching then?” He was sure he almost heard a little squeak from near his bed.  _ A different kind of mouse _ .

Lars huffed, somewhat amused, “I  _ hear _ enough. But-” he leaned down to speak closer to Hans, “when you’re done with her I have a few  _ ideas _ .” 

Hans revelled in these moments when he could crack Lars’ unbending exterior and play off him  _ like a wave _ . It seldom happened but when it did, it was almost palpable.

Lars took the unprincipled smirk on his brother’s face as his cue to finally leave the room, passing only a nod to the woman before snapping the door shut with a finalising click of the latch.

Hans turned to her, “Now then. Your name, little mouse?” He ignored her stunned expression and moved nearer to her.

“Eirá,” He stopped moving so she added a “my lord.”

“You’re not from The south are you?” 

She closed their distance then, looping an arm over one of his shoulders, smiling at the way his eyes followed this movement, “North of here, Jurtos.” 

Jurtos was another Southern region, on the other side of The Bear Woods. It shared it’s edge with Ingermore Run, the river that ran from the great Iron Fjord in Aren Fell.

Hans hummed but the sound was caught in his throat as her unoccupied hand wandered down his vested abdomen and towards his crotch. “No,” he said “on the bed.” 

She smiled with a giggle and bounced over to the foot of his bed. He followed her. Once she was sitting there, she pulled him closer by his belt loops, “You must be quite experienced with women…” she blushed, “and you’re brothers if you suggested such a thing to tha-”

“No,” he said again, falling to kneel between her legs and reaching behind him, “I’ve hardly been with many women at all.” Her face dropped then, little brows creasing above those chipped eyes.  _ Maybe he did care to notice them after all _ . He continued, “And now, Eirá… I find myself betrothed.” She shifted up from where she was leaning back on her forearms. “So I cannot enjoy you in a  _ conventional way _ .”

Eirá smiled in understanding and sat up fully, expecting him to rise too so she could tend to him. But he stayed in place and pulled his hand from behind his back. A gruesome sort of serrated blade in his palm. “M-my lord?” she was beginning to tremble, frozen in disbelief-  _ a much prettier look on her _ , he thought.

He grabbed her ankle and brought the edge of the blade close to her skin, looked up at her face, “Don’t be scared of being loud, mouse.” and grazed the knife’s tip up along the length of her leg.

Thank the Gods for blood.

…

“And If I see you again, giant man, it’ll be too soon.” 

Kristoff never liked when children sounded like their parents- a cycle that let stupid people live on through their generations. 

But he finally left the bounds of Aren Fell with a thankful wave over his shoulder in spite of himself.

He resisted looking back over his shoulder at the guards stationed along the walls, he resisted running straight into the Winterwoods, he resisted knocking the nearest rider off their horse and setting a straight course back North. But he kept his head up and followed the dirt path leading to what a sign claimed was  _ Swanton Hold  _ and  _ The Arm _ , Eastwards of Aren Fell. 

“ **Any place would be better.** ” He muttered under a breath. 

Eventually, he was far enough from the city grounds that as soon as a lull in passersby opened, he veered quickly off path and into the towering white trees of the Winterwoods.

Navigating through these trees had never been hard for him but figuring out the whereabouts of his hiding comrades would be much harder. The thought had dawned on him that maybe they had thought him as good as dead in Aren Fell and were already continuing South. What would his mother think?

With hope to push him, he wandered further into the woods, the sky turning into a romantic pink above him. Escaping Aren Fell even with a local took a good chunk of daylight as they still had to be mindful of not drawing suspicion or attention. And now night would fall soon enough. And with it the waking of the beasts of these woods.

Then, he saw it. The flicker of golden light ahead of him. Then, it came upon him. Someone had launched from the treetops and, in a swift second, they had pinned him to the ground. 

“ **We thought you were dead.** ” the voice came from in front of him. He tried to look up but from his spot he could only see a pair of furry boots. 

The force against his back left and in one motion he was pulled up by arms that then found their place snuggly around his middle.

“ **Nice to see you too, Mortu.** ” he said to the man across from him. 

Mortu, his older brother had many of the same features as he but they were all a few shades darker. He looked down, “ **And to you too, Diina,** ” The girl who had her arms around him gave him a squeeze before reaching up to swat at his hair, “ **But did you have to knock me down like that?** ”

Diina, his younger sister took after his mother- a whiter blonde hair that reached far down her back in a practical braid (something his mother had woven before they left. He wished that the braids in his hair hadn’t fallen into loose sections).

“ **You could’ve been an Ironbarer or a** **_troll,_ ** ” she shrugged but her face was a mix of serious concern and relief, “ **but it is good to see you alive, Kristoff.** ”

He nodded, letting Mortu and Diina lead him closer to the golden light that was actually a small fire. 

Mortu cleared his throat, “ **You weren’t followed out here?** ”

Kristoff shook his head, looping an arm over Diina’s shoulders.

“ **The others? Luras- Glenn?** ” her voice cracked at the latter name.

He shook his head again, desperately ignoring the lump he saw catch in her throat. He turned his gaze to the fire and the two seated by it. One was busy binding a few rabbits to a branch, the other looking content to just watch the flames. They both looked up at him as he approached. 

“ **Kristoff!** ” They both said at once.

He offered them only a wave but they both stood up and circled the fire to meet him. “ **What the fuck are you wearing?** ” one said, Ryder. 

Ryder’s sister, Máren jabbed her elbow into his side, “ **Never mind that, how’d you get out! What did they do to you?** ”

Kristoff sighed and sat down near the fire. 

He told them everything- the Princess and the blonde man, the first death among them, the dungeons, the escape, the room, the window, the strike and the fall, the bear-like man and his son, The Wall and his last steps out of the city. 

Kristoff left out the woman and the book still tucked in his pocket. He didn’t know yet what to make of both but overcomplicating a story certainly was not what he was about to do- not after telling them how three of their own had come to a horrible end.

“ **We** **_can’t_ ** **turn back now. Empty sacrifices mean nothing to the Gods!** ” Mortu had hardened after the initial shock of Kristoff’s words sank in and Ryder suggested heading back to The North.

Diina’s head had found comfort in resting against Kristoff’s shoulder, after hearing the description of Glenn’s end she went quiet. Kristoff was more than willing to give her any comfort.

“ **Think of all the** **_babies, Ryder- there is no final body count._ ** ” Máren snapped at her brother. 

Kristoff swallowed, the unburdening weight of the book feeling like a mountain in his pocket, “ **We know what the Gods need, what** **_she_ ** **wants. We have to go further South.** ”

  
  


Kristoff found himself awake through that whole night, volunteering that his still-running adrenaline be put to use, the others asleep around him. 

He watched the morphing shapes in the burning embers of the fire, trying to distract himself from the burning urge to pull open the book. But the last thing he wanted was someone waking up and asking questions he couldn’t begin to answer. Kristoff almost thought better of the silly little book and considered throwing it on the fire.

But the Queen Mother’s last word rang again in his mind and so he checked it’s safe little place in his pocket and focused his racing mind on trying to fix the braids in his hair, using a sleeping Diina as reference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to my reader but also to Jae and Molly who let me go off in bouncing ideas around and keeping my passion up for this story!  
> you're the best!
> 
> As usual- sound off as to what you think about this chapter :) xx


	9. Poppies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note to readers: if you remember the character Lord Robin, this is him- I changed the spelling of the name to Lord Robyn bc it was annoying me, new readers dw, I've changed it in all previous chapters!

The sound of silk sweeping across the floor echoed the distant crashing of waves against the rocks of the Iron Fjord. Lord Robyn was often called _“a snake among foxes”_ , not a particularly smart metaphor but it amused plenty. A man on the Queen’s council with one leg and arms always stuffed under folds of silk- slippery and all too confident on a single limb. 

The stump of his flesh where a leg was supposed to be was strapped up in tight fitting leather that held a wooden peg in place. He refused to use a cane. Lord Robyn managed to learn how to step without the clunk and clop of the wood against the floor, adapting a sort of gliding to his stride- secrets of this meticulous movement kept well under cloth.

He had just finished attending the council meeting and wanted nothing more than to retire for the night. The Princess looked like she needed more sleep than he- a man in his sixties. Her eyes were red from the crying she hid in vain, actually, her whole body was lacking its entire spark as if some unnatural force had drained it from her. The only thing Lord Robyn wanted more than to offer an old man’s ear to the girl was to permanently close the Duvote’s mouth after he had rambled on and on and on about what the Gods thought of Anna now that her family was fading into the seas. The Duvote- the head of the capital Temple, the centered home of worship for the two Gods- was a respectable man in the Lord’s eyes, his own faith in the Gods never falling, but he was painfully oblivious. Telling a girl that her own late mother should’ve made the effort to at least kneel by her own bedside each night to pray to the Gods so she’d be saved. Lord Robyn knew Iduna well, she had not left that bed in seven years. 

The thing is, Lord Robyn used to be a representative of the Temple, not the Duvote but a Clergical member, many years ago. He was dismissed however when he was found in the soft arms of a young woman. He could still remember every detail of his atonement. He had hung by his wrists on The Wall and watched as the woman he loved was walked through the streets, a naked target for stones and rotten food and other _unmentionables_ \- because it was, of course, _“her fault that a man of the Gods would betray his own solemn words.”_ And the Gods demanded the rest of the flesh that was his half-leg.

And now here he was, a valued member of the Queen’s council simply because he gave himself to a public show of shame. He was a living symbol of the Gods’ forgiveness and she was their punishment.

Lord Robyn often stalked around the castle halls late into the night, a crippled man barely aroused any heed. He wasn’t looking for anything _or anyone_ per se but something about the sturdiness of the walls around him served as a comfort. And in these stressing times, any kind of comfort was not something to waste.

He crossed paths with the Princess herself, in front of the late Queen Mother’s door. She was out of her formal wear and wrapped up in her full length, woolen coat. It had a swirling brocade of dancing foxes and intricate floral shapes. She barely noticed his approach, eyes glued to the wood of the door that did little to contain the smell of stale blood.

“My Lady,” he bowed to her, something he had mastered on the one leg, “I’d advise against roaming these halls this late, you need your rest.”

She considered him with emptied eyes, “I’ve tried resting, my Lord. But all I can see is a hall of burning bodies.”

He took her arm with a pat and started leading her away from that morbid door, “perhaps I can organise a pot of poppy tea for your ease, dear Princess?” 

She hummed an affirmation, something else clearly on her mind. Perhaps burning bodies plagued her waking mind too- how many had she seen in one young life? A hall, indeed. “Lord Robyn?” She finally gave in to her ponderings.

He looked at her, catching the reflection of the rows of torches in her eyes, “Yes, my Lady?”

“Have the Gods really punished my crippled mother because she could not move to pray?” there was a little shake in her voice. But she could sense his hesitation on the subject she had pried, “I know you’re not allowed to speak for the Gods anymore but- well…you-” The Princess knew his story.

“I’ve been divided from the divine by love?” 

“Isn’t love Godly?”

He scoffed a little, “Love is a terribly strong power, my Lady. But it is also a ruthless killer. You’re mother- may she rest ever after- lived her whole life at love’s mercy.” He smiled a little, “So yes, love is very Godly.”

“But which God is love? Day or night? Land or sea? Life or death?” They both had to lift their skirts to climb the spiralling stairs. “It can’t… be both?”

“Can it not?” 

The Princess seemed struck at that. But her aura was covered less by the heaviness of melancholy, it felt more present, awake.

“Forgive me, my Lady,” He said after she was quiet for a few too many seconds, “I didn’t intend to confuse you-”

“And what is love to the old Gods?” she wondered. It was his turn to fall silent. He had much less right to speak of the old deities than the new ones. “Please, Lord Robyn?”

He sighed kindly, “I met a Northern Gotthi once.”

“Gotthi?”

“A woman who spends her life acting as the hands of the old Gods. She would pull babies from their mothers, bind lovers for life and organise _sacrifices_.” He stopped to swallow that word but continued his thought aloud to her soon after, “ I was much younger then but I still remember the stories she told me of the old Gods: The Mother of fire and mercy, The Father who takes and takes with just, The Ghost of the mountain who commands the cold, and The Son in the forest. I never learnt what love was to The Northerners or their Gods but I can guess it was just as neutral and allusive as it is to you and I, Princess.” He let his words sink into her thoughts for a few minutes of quiet walking. They were nearing her chambers.

The Princess took a breath and straightened her shoulders, “They hail a _Mother of mercy_ but see fit in taking a defenseless woman’s life. I’d sooner trust every snake in the garden over such _feral_ _beasts_.”

The guard waiting at her door opened it for her as they neared, stepping aside again for her and lowering his head. He was not trained to hear what he hadn’t been told to hear.

Lord Robyn bowed too as she left his side to stand opposite him, “People are prone to making what are too often bad choices- sometimes what one says they believe in is not what they are willing to live by.” He took a step back on his wooden leg, “I’ll see that you have a steaming pot of fresh poppy tea within the hour, my Lady.”

…

As promised, within the hour, Anna found herself inhaling the pacifying fumes of a pot of poppy tea. She had already drunk two little cups of the brew and was scooping another from the large pot, dressed in little more than her shift and combinations on the edge of her bed. Her hair was already brushed out of it’s stressful style and braided back simply.

The Lord Robyn’s words were still floating around her mind, she had the feeling they would for days more, but for the time being she only wished to consider them at face meaning. Maybe she’d relay them to Elsa when she returned.

 _Elsa_. Her sister never was the kind to spend time writing letters back to her when she was away from Aren Fell, she’d much rather keep moving, but it struck her harder now.

A knock and Gerda’s inquiry of decency disturbed her thoughts but she replied with an affirming sound. _Was she decent in every sense of the word?_

Gerda came into the room, opening the door only wide enough for her body to fit through, with a pile of furs in her arms, “For your bed, my Lady. The winter is certainly coming, nothing is more certain than the seasons.” She went about laying the furs along the foot of the bed. Then she sighed and put them all down, came around to indirectly stand in front of Anna, “May I take that from you, my Lady, so you can lay down and let the tea work it’s way into your body?” 

Anna nodded and set the little cup down next to the pot after downing the last few drops. Once under the cotton sheets, Gerda began draping the furs over her body. Anna looked up at her, a question on the edge of her lips, “Gerda, do you know much about the Gods?”

Gerda was visibly taken aback by her question, “I attend the weekly mass with you, my Lady. And I know the Gods will take care of your mother- may she rest ever after- and they are bringing your Queen sister back home as we speak, Gods be good.”

Anna’s mouth closed and she let her eyes rest on the ceiling, tracing every line in the wooden banisters of her canopy bed on the way up. Gerda was never as openly vulnerable with her thoughts and now she wondered if that was a good thing. 

  
  
  


_Anna opened her eyes, they instantly burned dry with her proximity to the fire. She was surrounded by red flames, rings of heat with little else in sight._

_She looked down and took in her nudity, gleaming as the encompassing warmth drew out the moisture in her skin. It flowed from the notch at the base of her neck down her chest and through the valley of her sternum where it collected at her stomach, and leaked out of her in a steam that’s scent had carried over from her latest waking moment. Poppy tea._

_Her hand came up of its own accord to skim the nape of her neck- her hair was gone, fried into strings of black and still burning. It was a horrible smell._

_Tentatively, Anna extended an arm out, walking the single pace that separated her from the immediate fire. Her feet crunched against the ground and she realised she was standing on a layer of black ash so compact it hardly shifted. It looked like the edge of the Iron Fjord._

_Her hand was still reaching for the fire but she glanced behind her and sure enough, there was the glistening water. It was black too but rippling with light itself, contrasting the matt texture of the ashes. She turned back to the flames._

_Her saliva turned thin inside her throat, scratching, clawing at the roof of her mouth, she swallowed anyway._

_Anna’s fingertips danced in the tendrils of the fire, and when her skin stayed pink, she started grasping at the flames with full, open hands._

_She stepped through the wall of fire. It licked at the entire expanse of her skin, gloss turning to white smoke and climbing above her into an empty sky._

_And when she was on the other side of the first ring she saw them. A hall of bodies, spreadeagle between posts. “Mother to mother,” they told her, “mother to mother.”_

_There was another figure somewhere behind the bodies. It was taller than her, she could tell that even at a distance. But it was wider too- or was the wave of the heat expanding this mystery body? Was anything real in the haze of the fire?_

_Then the body separated, it became more than a single figure. She couldn’t count them all but they all looked the same, they all watched her from the other side of the last ring of fire._

_“Mother to mother,” they chanted, “mother to mother.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as usual- feed me with your thoughts! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and as it may be apparent, I'm starting to get more comfortable with writing longer chapters xx


	10. Skin Like Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that people know that this whole fic has a pretty overarching tw and so I can't really describe each one as it gives plenty away but don't worry, I will be doing it for more 'heavy' chapters- this one isn't too bad but please do be warned from here on out, I don't want to upset anyone x

Hans approached his father’s back with learned wariness, hand flexing at his side, wanting. The blood from his night endeavours had long since been washed from his skin but the smell lingered in his nose for him to enjoy as long as it lasted. 

The dogs had eaten well last night.

He could still feel the remnants of bile in his throat from moments ago when Johan and Earling had held him down and kneed him in the stomach. “ _Punishment,”_ they had said “ _for how the Gods would let a filthy rat like you be chosen for the Princess._ ” 

Finn and Filip also left sick gifts of wisdom onto him, “... _make sure you fuck her hard and good as soon as she gets here, or one of us might steal her from you, little brother.”_

He didn’t dare move much under the hawk eye of his mother and brother Arren who stood beside him, static like a mountain in perfect military poise.

His father cleared his throat, “There is word from the moving Queen that the Queen Mother has suffered a most horrible death at the hands of the Northmen, son.” Hans didn’t need to guess which one of them he was addressing and which one he was neglecting.

“Are we still to travel to Aren Fell, father?” Arren asked.

Henrik turned to the both of them, a sigh escaping him. Sleepless nights pulled at the skin around his eyes like fish hooks had been stuck there with stones to pull. “You _both_ will be leaving immediately for Aren Fell.” He sat down then at his old oak desk, an artifact that had withstood to hold the weight of all the Lords of the South. “As the promised husband to the Queen you will need to uphold her honor, give her the head of this dog and any other scum in her midst.” Arren bowed to his Lord father who smiled, “Our name will finally be on top, the Ardelles are a broken lot of kits with only a bastard boy and two little vixens.”

“So we rule in the South and in the Midlands-” Hans started, eyes open far wider than before at this revelation.

“And so there is a brain in that skull of yours, boy. Or should I call you _My Prince_ ?” Those words slid off his tongue with so much venom that his father’s spit could be acid rain. _And what would acid rain do to the waves of the sea?_ “The Ardelle women have sadly been unable to deliver the birthright fate of such dogs and now they cry over a mauled lamb. You both will be in power, I expect you to assert yourselves and the name you bear and lead this poor land into a summer that’ll last the rest of our natural lives. Am I clear?”

“Yes, father.” They both said and left the room.

_The acid may corrupt the water but the waves would still crash in their own mightiness against the shore. And Hans would be sure to kick back with just as much violence._

  
  


As he looked down at his hands he remembered the first time he’d heard that word _acid_. 

After his mother told him about how she’d birthed him and his brothers in the shallow waves of the ocean she’d pulled him by the wrist back to the bounds of the Southwake castle and thrown him at the feet of the Southwake Bishop.

Hans had come into the world with an extra finger on each hand. He so often heard the screaming of his mother “ _Twelve fingers! Twelve! The Gods have punished us for thirteen sons!_ ”

He could still see the divot in his hands where the extra digits had grown, lopped off when he was small.

_“To return such a gift to the Gods is an insult no matter it’s unholiness. We cannot burn him or feed him to the dogs.” The Bishop had told his distressed mother, she fell apart in his Godly hands._

_“No!” she screamed, “Let him be carried away by the sea, the Gods will take him where the Gods want him!”_

_“We'll remove his fingers but we cannot destroy them. He must live.”_

_“The Gods clearly have told us a thirteenth son is to bring a monster into this world! I won’t have him!”_

And against his mother’s best wishes and efforts, Hans had lived. His father, though vehement in his own hatred of his son, would always see that he’d be pulled out of the water at the last second, that his son had servants tasting his food before it even touched his lips. He was of Southern blood and that was enough for his father.

Once his fingers were sliced off, his hands were doused in a burning fluid called mountainfire. 

It was a clear, lustrous substance that was collected from the northernmost mountains, it burned skin but relieved pain. It used to be thought to be a gift of The Father who takes as it took pain and left seared flesh in its wake, or of The Mother with her mercy to sickness and burning fire. But The North, and especially the North mountains where mountainfire was found was the home of The Ghost. Before the long years of winter befell the land, mountainfire was harvested from the great Nordfjellet, now home to the wargs and beasts of the cold, its native people trapped in their demonic possession. And now, mountainfire was rare but still attainable from traders who would slip into the midst of the Northfolk and brave a journey to their mountains alone. 

It was a rare medicinal luxury in The South.

The mountainfire scorched the tips of his weeping flesh closed and splattering bubbles of the stuff bleached the skin on his tiny, soft hands.

His severed fingers were kept and cooked to make forcing them down his own throat seem less barbaric. His flesh belonged to him and so it would return to him. Perhaps an animalistic notion that survived others this far south.

Those marks followed him everyday since.

And so he hid them in a pair of heavy leather gloves and prepared to leave Southwake for Aren Fell.

… 

Anna awoke to the sound of a shriek. She bolted upright in bed, face to face with Gerda who turned pale as a ghost. As pale as her mother even in life. The tray that bore her breakfast clattered against the floor, shards of dinnerware and warm tea spilling at Gerda’s feet.

The fact that such a sickness could be called life made her want to renounce the Gods all at once- old and new. A sacreligious thought- not her first- but she was safe among them.

“Why did you scream, Gerda, what’s wrong?” Anna frowned, her brows knit together harshly as she was met too with the offensive flare of sunlight that bounced through the windows.

Gerda stuttered over her words, eyes closing and opening each time wider as if she were willing herself out of a dream. “M-my Lady, your- forgive me.” she pointed to her face. Anna raised a hand to her head, touching around her face to Gerda’s horror. She moved to swing her legs out of her blanket of hides but was adamantly stopped. “No, my lady-the china!” She was still wound tight all over, body rigid but she insisted herself over to Anna’s vanity where she plucked up her little ornate hand mirror. 

Something that had belonged to her mother once. Until she claimed she could no longer look at herself, and she gave it to Anna.

Gerda shuffled through the chips of china and handed Anna the mirror, her wrinkled hand shaking all the while. Her eyes were glued to a spot on Anna’s face.

Anna turned her head in the mirror in disbelief of what she saw. 

There, on the hairline of her temple was a splotch of white skin, the hair growing from its place had turned the same white ash that crowned Elsa. It wasn’t black and singed like in her dream- but bright and stark instead like fresh fallen snow. 

She touched the hair again and again, perhaps expecting it to fall out or flake off like paint or ash but it remained.  
  


After the shock eased Anna wasted no time leaping out of bed, stepping through the shards of plate with imprudence that would have the soles of her feet cut and pricked. Gerda rushed to keep up with her Princess, wordlessly wiping her feet free of debris and slipping them into a little pair of soft leather sandals. She was covered with her big woolen coat like the night before and as soon as the door was opened for her realisation struck her and she ran. 

Straight into the arms of Ingar who had his knuckles raised to knock at her door.

  
  


“And you woke up with it?” He asked her. Anna’s head was resting over the back of the basin. The steam of the cloudy water let her breath through the ceaseless pounding of her heart and soothed the sting at the bottom of her feet.

Anna’s eyes widened, “You don’t think my poppy tea was _poisoned_ ?” Lord Robyn wouldn’t- _would he?_

_“...sometimes what one says they believe in is not what they are willing to live by”_

Ingar had rolled up his shirt’s thin sleeves to his elbows- the bastards were the first to freeze in the hard winter- and dipped a washcloth into the water by her shoulders, the steam calmed him too, “He told me once, not long ago, that any man in sleeve is of suspicion, he called the dogs of The North _lambs_ , and likened our family to them.” 

Anna recalled the conversation she had with Lord Robyn that night, looking for hidden malicious tone in anything he said as Ingar began to work at making a lather with the sweet-smelling soap to scrub at the streak in her hair. She looked up at him through her lashes, “ _our_ family?”

Ingar stopped and met her eyes again. She froze, not being able to read Ingar’s expression left a tingling in her bones that she felt even in her teeth and stomach. The curtain of his unbound hair hung down around his face, for once, there was more than one feature they shared. His eyes softened again and he flicked a droplet of water onto her nose, “I’m born of a fox am I not? Second born and only son, swinger of the sword, Master of Mercy- the bastard.”

Anna smiled, “Olaf.” 

“Olaf.” he nodded, returning to the task of her white hair. She closed her eyes then, a secret prayer to the Gods that the white would be removed from her hair but he spoke again. “A fox pounces on the snakes that enter their den before the whole skulk is lost to its venom,” he leaned closer to her ear, still holding her hair, “lest the snake _takes_ the den for himself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so we've got some more canon references and more backstory for some characters! I hope you enjoyed this one and I can't wait to hear thoughts back for this one! 
> 
> thanks, as always, for reading xxxx


	11. Mother Anew

Jarri sighed against the hands that plied his shoulders. His rigid and frozen muscles moulded under her fingers like the clay butter she churned from goats for bread she kneaded similarly under skillful palms.

“ **And if the Ironbarers have not done harm to our kin? What then?** ” Her voice was like honey, warm like milk with the fire that burned by them. To be kept warm against such unforgiving coldness, she was his blessing. Though her hair was as black as the darkest nights, her eyes glowed between those ebony curtains like the stars themselves. 

Her hands traveled past the chapped skin of his neck to fuss over his loosened braids only to be caught in his quick grasp. The scar of their union was still gruesome, offending the firmness of her hardworking skin. He remembered the way her fresh blood sept out of it and how she had painted it against his own only two moons ago. To soften his action he planted a kiss there, “ **You doubt the scum of the south wouldn't kill any of them on sight?** ” She slid off her place in the large carved chair to sit behind him, “ **My brothers, my sister- they’d slaughter them like raw, runt babes. Such a curse will not go to waste, love.** ”

“ **Such poor, Godless children.** ” She pressed herself closer to him so that he could feel the humble swell of her belly against his back, “ **They call themselves foxes, my love -we, their wolves,** ” her other hand slid over his solid shoulder and down across the story told on his chest in ink, “ **wolves** **_ravish_ ** **their prey, tear them apart should they touch but one of the pack.** ”

Jarri sighed against the skin of her neck he could reach, entertained in the way it sent a ripple through her, “ **_Not only a fox-_ ** **after all what** **_can_ ** **escape the jaws of the starved wolf?** ” 

She matched the fire in his words with her own smoke, “ **A** **_bigger_ ** **wolf.** ” He released his grip on her wrist and with a lingering kiss to his cheek, she went back to twisting and weaving his hair as she pleased.

The braids of a Northern man’s hair were as sacred as the tales carved into his mantel, as individual as the pricks of ink that adorned his chest. As a child, a boy’s mother would braid his hair, and once he married it was his wife’s honor to also crown him with her knots. 

“ **Your mother would curse you too should you not head her warnings- as would I. Are your spiritwalkings not enough, my love?** ” 

Jarri swallowed, “ **I’d promise you the throat of that fox queen as the first meal upon our son’s lips-** **_that_ ** **would be enough.** ” 

Her arms came round the sturdy pillar that was his neck, “ **The same day the mountains would dance like trees in the breeze and She, The Ghost would cease her sending of the cold.** ”

“ **You curse me now, Ina?** ” He let his lips ghost over the rosy flesh of her cheek, “ **My own wife?** ”

She smiled and stroked the crest of his nose, “ **Doubt my mountain? Never. I’d believe that you’d rip it from her neck on the same moon as his birth but the beasts of the Winterwoods wouldn’t allow you to pass- far less your mother.** ” Ina pressed a kiss under the caress of her finger. 

An amused and equally loving grin gracing his winter-hardened face. His gaze raked from her chin to the strength in her eyes, “ **You’re scared of her?** ”

She hummed a sigh, “ **I wouldn’t name it fear- admiration? Respect?** ”

“ **Aye, I respect her too- she’s my mother- but don’t tell me you’re planning on taking a Gotthi life?** ” 

“ **Not if I can help it- which is why you’d do more good to stay on this side of the woods.** ” Ina laughed and pulled herself up from behind him easily with the meagre weight in her womb, barely a burden, “ **I don’t think I’d much suit the dress.** ”

He laughed too and leaned back against the apron of the chair, watching his wife as she took to the pot on the cracking fire. The reindeer hides draped over the large chair soothed the itch on his back. It calmed him too and so he took a deep breath, remembering fondly how his father would always feel and smell like these hides. Permanently perfumed with pine needles and earth- such aromas shouldn’t be associated with the rabid cold.

That man had died sixteen years ago,  _ warg food _ , when he chased after his hour-old daughter, Vera, who had been snatched up by the great demons in fur. His father had been dressed in reindeer that day too. 

Jarri and his young siblings grieved still years after he had been taken from them but he seldom saw his mother cry more than a single tear. 

She was shaking horribly in his father’s favourite place by their hearth one night, the rest of his brothers and sisters tucked into both ends of the bed they came to share. 

Once she saw him, her oldest boy, up at the ungodly hours of the night, she took him into her arms and let him watch the dancing fire as she willed the tears back into her eyes.

_ After a moment of silence Jarri spoke up, “ _ **_If father were here what would he say?_ ** _ ” _

_ She sniffed and hugged him closer to her chest, “ _ **_He’d tell you to run the moment you catch smell of the beasts._ ** _ ” _

_ “ _ **_Do I run for the trees or to my family?_ ** _ ” the innocent posings of a child were usually striking- this one was heartbreaking. _

_ “ _ **_Family, my love, always. Like your father did._ ** _ ” _

_ He tipped his head back to ask, “ _ **_What do they smell like?_ ** _ ”  _

_ “ _ **_A demon hidden in the fur of a beast, the warg can mask all but it’s stench- like death itself, reeking from it’s mouth with all the lives it takes._ ** _ ” these were, without a doubt, the words she recalled from when her own mother answered questions just as hard. _

_ Jarri turned back to the fire, knowing he’d be sent back to bed soon enough, “ _ **_So wargs are sent by The Father? To take lives with just?_ ** _ ” _

_ He could hear the bittersweet smile in his mother’s voice, “ _ **_No, sweet child. The Father keeps his own wolves- Sult, Smerte and Kald- they are nothing like the wargs… they take only in just._ ** _ ” _

Jarri often wondered which of The Father’s wolves would come for him one day- his mother, his siblings, his children to come. 

With one last blissful inhale of the warm and plentiful world he sat in, he stood and was reminded of the cold that raged only a wall away. 

Jarri came to engulf his little wife’s frame in his arms as she disturbed the boar bones in the soup, the rupture of her soft laugh warmed him again, “ **You’re that of a dream no matter your dress…** ” he pressed a rough hand over the entire curve of her abdomen, stroking over the fabric of her shift with his thumb, “ **but I promise you, Ina, that it’ll be a lifetime before I leave you to the fate of those robes.** ”

She covered his hand with her own, relaxing in the blanket of his hold, “ **It’s never been in my interest to serve as a widowed witch for any moment of my life, Gods be good.** ”

He nodded as his chin came to perch atop her shoulder, echoing her sentiment, “ **Gods be good.** ”

… 

Bulda checked the contents of all the pouches and pockets of her leather satchel again- salt, blessed white hides, mountainfire, the blood of a winter bull, rosemary sprigs, finger-length carved stone totems- before setting out through the mist.

The freshly charcoal-stained garb that covered her body didn’t take long to be dusted with the softness of light snow, and so she quickly blended in with her surroundings once again. 

One thing in The North that never responded to the will of the seasons was the birth of babes- they  _ had _ to be steady and current to account for those that would inevitably be taken by wolf or wag or Father. 

Among her Godly duties as a Gotthi was bridging the gift of the Gods with her own hands from her own blood- mother to mother. It was arguably one of the better tasks she partook in even with its fair mix of pain and gore and sometimes  _ loss _ .

Having birthed her own litter of nine, she more than understood that of a mother’s place but working, pulling and  _ cutting _ as the hands of The Mother and The Son never got easier.

  
  


“ **Breathe, child, breathe.** ” she whispered to the young woman spread before her. She was already laid out on the pelt of a large bear, of which Bulda had soon taken and hung to drip the spilt fluid that had saturated the tips of the fibers into a shallow bowl. Bulda replaced the comfortable surface of such with the white hides so that anything that would come from this young mother could be openly shown to the Gods. And in the corners of the sacred space Bulda had drawn with salt, stood the little stone figures- their faces though little and crude were ghastly and haunting despite their holy importance.

White animal fur for the snow- The Ghost, and the blood that would come from her- The Son. The Father and Mother demanded offerings too.

“ **Get ready to hold her down.** ” she instructed the mother’s husband, his hands were shaking with another kind of chill. It reminded her all too well of her own first birth- Bjarg had come back from hunting to find his wife in the throes of the exact thing she was about to do next. 

Bulda pulled out her little blade from its sheath in her boot and the horn of winter bull’s blood, “ **Cup your hands.** ” 

The woman’s husband did so and Bulda poured the blood into them. It trickled through his tightly pressed fingers and dripped to mix with that of the blood of his wife, it would be gone soon so she worked steadily and fast. She brought the blade of the knife over the fire that boiled her concoction of mountainfire and rosemary, fumes pungent and sharp. The fire, of course, was for The Mother, although her mercy was not present in childbirth.

Then, once the blade was sterilised by the fire and swiped to cut through the strings of smoke from the bubbling mix, it was brought under the dripping of the bull’s blood before it could leave the husband’s hands entirely. She flourished the blade in her wrist, painting the forehead of the husband with the flicks of the blood.

And then it was time to take for The Father. 

“ **Hold her now, child, do not wipe your hands.** ” she said, watching as bloody hands pinned twitching wrists down. Bulda leaned in and began cutting into the flesh of the underside of the mother’s arm. The woman screamed with the pain of her babe beginning to crown from her and with each stroke of Bulda’s knife.

“ **This child is a gift from The Son, a new child of the forest.** ” The shapes she cut in her arm started to take on the picture of a wolf and a bull. 

The wolf was on Bulda’s own arm too- it stood for all the Northfolk- but beside her own wolf scab was a stag that ran along her flesh for her Bjarg. 

Bulda shook these mournful thoughts from the bounds of her thought- she had to be present while she continued her verbal blessings as they mixed with the messy screams of the mother beside her, “ **Pray this child bares the ability to spiritwalk so that he may be further tied to this land around us. Keep this child from the jaws of wargs and The Father’s wolves alike for now. Gods grant this healthy babe to this pair and take him again only in due time.** ” And so the bleeding image was finished and Bulda moved her hands to the opening between the woman’s legs, ignoring the painful expression on the husband’s face. 

She had worked and cut and now she pulled too.

While the fresh babe cooled and cried against his mother’s naked breast, Bulda busied herself in wrapping the woman’s afterbirth in a piece of sturdy leather. The cord of flesh that attached mother to son was sometimes cut from the afterbirth should the babe need more than blessing in their first hours, but the beasts prefered it stay connected. She stood, the mass in her arms and waited, watching as the father readied what was his first parental duty. He planted a kiss on the forehead of his wife and new son, draped the coat off his back over their sweaty, bloody forms and stood to follow Bulda out the house.

His hands were still smeared with the dried blood of the bull and slick with the freshness of his son when she placed the package in his arms, “ **What are the words again, Gotthi?** ”

They had reached the edge of the Winterwoods, just before the trees thickened, “ **Take of which I offer onto you and by The Son of the forest may he be granted your eyes.** ” 

He nodded and made his way into the woods, she followed behind him after pulling out the crystal that hung around her neck from the folds of her dress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more diving into Northern lore- I hope you're all finding it as interesting as it is fun to write and craft x  
> as always, I hope you're enjoying the story thus far! thanks for reading :)


	12. The Path You Take

When Diina woke up the first thing she saw was Kristoff’s hair, immaculately braided back to how she remembered it was when he left them with Glenn and the other two men. 

_Diina was frozen in place by the sight of the fiery sun eclipsed by the great structure of the Aren Fell castle. She had never seen it in her life but looking down upon its towers and spires from the highest point of the other side of the Iron Fjord at night was nothing compared to looking up at it from the edge of the Winterwoods in the wake of day. It was as if it was on fire itself, in this halo of flames, it dared to be touched, to burn._

_She was swept off her feet by burly arms from behind, “_ **_Kristoff!_ ** _” she yelped but wriggled out of his grasp easily. Diina turned to meet him, his golden hair glowing in the dance of the light that was now behind her, her jovial smile wilted quickly._

 _“_ **_I- we’ll be fine, Diina._ ** _” He offered her his hand which she took easily. “_ **_You just worry about getting this lot by the bounds of Aren Fell._ ** _”_

 _“_ **_And you’re sure that there’s even a little chance that Her Stolen Body is in that place._ ** _” Diina stepped to stand beside him so that she could marvel again at the castle. Her hand stayed in his._

 _“_ **_Even a little chance is chance enough-_ ** _” He squeezed her hand._

 _She scowled, “_ **_They’re fools then. Hiding something they stole this close to us._ ** _”_

 _“_ **_A foolish kind of cunning to do so._ ** _” She met his eyes again, an artificial spark in them. Not his own fire. His face had few scars or blemishes- much of his skin was so- but she guessed that upon seeing him again (if ever) he’d have more to show._

_No more words were needed between brother and sister so he pulled her close to him, enfolding her in his arms once more. When he pulled back from her, his nose wrinkled from the tickle of fur around her collar, she saw Glenn’s shadow come between them._

_In a second, his presence had replaced that of her older brother and he captured her lips with a kiss._

_“_ **_Please be safe, Glenn._ ** _” she held onto the cloth of his sleeve even as their lips separated as if it would keep him with her, tightly but shaking._

 _He smiled, pushed the curly mop of dark hair above his golden eyes and kissed her on the forehead, right between her dampening eyes, “_ **_Didn’t I promise you that we’d return home before Wolf Kald has arrived North?_ ** _” Glenn cupped her face with tender hands, “_ **_And that I’d bind myself to you as soon as we saw the snow painted in the blood of our enemies?_ ** _”_

_Diina could only smile and nod, looking over to see Ryder and Maren wrapping their father, Luras in a last hug, Kristoff had moved on to giving Mortu his goodbyes. Her arms moved to fold around Glenn’s neck, pulling him down significantly even on the toes of her boots._

_And soon after she watched them leave her._

She never wanted to believe that that was the last time she’d see Glenn. But somewhere in her broken heart she believed that he wouldn’t have left this world without a fight, that he was fighting to make it back to _her_ all the way until he fell from the window and met his drowned fate. He wasn’t bold like many other men she knew- or brave- but his heart beat strong and that had always been enough for her.   
She thanked the Gods that Kristoff had only said two bodies were on the wall- Glenn was not among their horrific displays of _devotion_ \- he was now with the Spirit of the Sea now. 

Kristoff’s sharp curse wrenched her thoughts back into the present, his lips sucking at the blood that pricked from his finger, a foregin knife and a partially whittled branch dropped in his lap. 

Diina sat up. Mortu was nowhere to be seen but Ryder and Maren sat a few paces away, tying twigs and bark together in what she recognised was a blessing wheel. For their lost father no doubt.

Kristoff noticed she was awake and mumbled around his finger, “ **Mortu went spiritwalking.** ”

She frowned, “ **Where’s his body?** ”

Kristoff pointed in her direction and she jumped when she turned to recognise her brother’s body beside her. He was propped up next to her against the log, eyes rolled back into his skull and his body rigid but breathing little puffs of air rhythmically. 

Diina was often astounded at the physical similarities between her older brothers, Kristoff and Mortu, it seemed like they were twins if not for a year and a shade of hair that separated them. And yet they were so different. 

Spiritwalking hardened souls with things unseeable, witnessing through the eyes of beasts sights that couldn’t be explained. Most spiritwalkers saw through animals- wild dogs, deer, bears, wolves, winter boars- but fewer of them saw through the eyes of the beasts of the Winterwoods. They had more names than just _beast_ as more than these creatures were beastly in The North, _demons_ sometimes but they weren’t demonic like the wargs- they were of the land and the Gods- certainly not demons. They had curled horns and monstrous noses from which their faces were sculpted, ratty hair that hung like rotten rope and only hands and feet to resemble man. That is- if man were centuries dead and exhumed, bones swollen and giant, and stretched between the skin of a pig- those would be his hands and feet.

Parents prayed the gift of this sight blessed their children but few gained it. Fewer lived long lives with it.

Mortu walked in the body of great bears, her oldest brother, Jarri in that of skittish doe, oldest sister, Livili in stags. This gift struck three of the oldest children of her family, but a larger litter would increase chance and so now her youngest sister, Nora was dreaming of soaring in the feathers of hawks, not walking yet, but dreams were _always_ the earliest signs. 

“ **How long?** ” Diina swept her fingers across Mortu’s brow. He twitched under her touch, distant but always within reach.   
Kristoff resumed cutting away at the branch, carving the end until it was little more than a splinter, “ **Not long,** ” he stopped to glance at her, pointing a thumb to where Ryder and Maren sat quietly and well out of earshot, “ **since they’ve been at that wheel.** ”

“ **I wish there was something I could make for Glenn.** ” She expected what she saw then in his expression, his shoulders buckled slightly and she could see it flash in his eyes. The memory of what he saw.

“ **If you were bonded you could take a Gotthi life but you’ve never mothered a child so you wouldn’t make a very good one.** ” there was a smile on his lips but it didn’t even try to reach his eyes. Kristoff fumbled with a strip of linen that she noticed was torn from the hem of his shirt, wrapping it around the stick in a way that would make it easier for him to carry and wield, “ **But he still is your kin, we can honour him properly when we get home.** ”

“ **We’re not going back home now,** ” Maren was standing over them both, Ryder hung the blessing wheel on a low hanging branch somewhere behind her, “ **not to name these sacrifices in vain.** ”

Ryder joined her side and planted a hand on her shoulder, “ **We’re going further South.** ”

Luras was already living again through his children.

… 

Lars smothered any slither of satisfaction that crept onto his face as he passed by a couple of women who were wondering aloud where their Eirá had gone. The sound of rattling in his purse gave music to each step as he easily found himself at the doctors’ stall in the Southwake market.

The man at the counter visibly brightened upon Lars’ appearance, “Lars, my lord! What have ye got for me this time?”

Lars pulled his purse from the string on his belt and fished out seven perfect little white teeth, “And…” he reached into another bag at his hip for a jar filled with alcohol and, “a tongue.”

The man delighted at this morbid offering, “wonderful, my lord.” he never bothered asking the source of such items. They were too rare to come by ethically anyway.

Lars didn’t know what doctors did with teeth or muscles or organs or body fluids, but he was a scavenger by learnt nature so he saw no shame in picking apart the aftermatter of his brothers’ playthings and finding them purpose.

And so Lars was heavier by twenty gold coins by the time he saw Hans at the stables. As he made his way over he noticed Johan and Earling leaning against the wooden post gate, he expected to hear their taunts and jeers at Hans as he got closer but they were uncharacteristically silent.

Of all his twelve brothers the ones that were insufferable tended to stay close by, three of the bearable ones, Peter, Ivan and Jon, were sent to the winds each on their eighteenth nameday. He hadn’t seen any of them since. 

This was the tradition ingrained in his father, a man who prioritised sowing oats, sending sons further South and East and West, past the borders of land where they’d continue the Southgaard legacy. 

Lars passed by Johan and Earling without even acknowledging them, coming to stand by Hans, “Finally running away from this shithole then?” Hans stopped his inept fiddling with the straps of his horse’s harness to open his mouth but Lars chipped in again, “I’m afraid you wouldn’t get much farther than Tarnton Hold before you’d be struck down, horse and all.” 

“And I wonder who’d strike me down.” Hans nodded his head over to the spot where Johan and Earling still remained at a distance. Content to watch and wait for perhaps was the perfect opportunity to do so. He resumed floundering in the loops of his horse’s bridle, “Oh, for brotherly love,” muttering “ _and blood_.” under a breath. Lars snatched the leather out of Hans hands and secured the harness on his horse, “I’m leaving for Aren Fell to meet my betrothed.”

With a firm tug, Lars stepped away from him and his horse, crossing his arms, “The bastard Prince counts his blessings with the days.” 

“I’ll be one man away from King.” Hans’ eyes locked in on Arren as he entered the stables with a nod to the redheads there. Arren finished buckling his snowy lynx cloak around his shoulders and mounted his giant, black shire horse.

Arren’s squire mounted his own horse next to him, followed by the Southgaard bannermen. Arren looked down at his little brother, “Catch up to us, brother,” he snapped the reins in his hands and began to lead his horse out of the stables and into a trot, “we won’t linger long.”

Hans quickly mounted the back of his grey Fjord horse but Lars was quicker to catch his reins before he could follow the challenge of a dozen horses galloping off, “A man away from King but heads above our father. You’d do well to believe in that being more than enough.”

Hans snickered, glancing at Johan and Earling and back to Lars, “twelve sons should’ve been more than enough.” When Lars didn’t answer him, Hans yanked his reins out of Lars’ grasp and clicked his tongue to his horse, “When you see me again, brother, it’ll be in line to bend your knee to my heir.”

And with that he left, a little cloud of dirt puffing over the horse shit, his last parting sentiment. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last part of this chapter was admittedly a bit choppy because I got a bit stumped in the dialogue but I think I patched it as well as I could hehe.
> 
> finally over 20k! hoorah!  
> as usual thankyou to everyone who has been sticking around this story, your support has always been great x


	13. Sinful Little Bird

Anna shook terribly, sending reverberating shock waves through Ingar’s entire body, as he led her down the passageway that connected the Aren Fell castle to the capital Temple. The white streak in her hair that had remained through scrubbing and soaking and dying was pinned back and hidden under a deliberate hairstyle.    
“They won’t have you flogged through the streets, Anna. I’ll see to that.” He looked down to her and saw the wobble in her lip. Just when he thought her skin was thickening...

Lord Robyn spoke up from the other side of Anna, “Your Queen sister would not have it either, my Princess.”

“Yet she sits on a horse now instead of her throne.” he murmured. Ingar remembered vaguely what the late king allowed in the Temple, when he was five years old and watching from the side of that man. 

_ “Bring the child in.” his Kingly father’s voice was seldom soft but its natural boom was amplified as it bounced off the walls and crashed around the great arches in the ceiling of the Temple. Ingar looked to the other side of his father where the Queen stood rigid, holding Elsa’s little fingers in one hand and cradling the new baby Princess against her chest.  _

_ He didn’t know why his father insisted that they all join him in watching these trials, he wondered more if he’d ever tell him.  _

The things his father did make him do- like deny him warm sleeves, look the other way when Ingar told him many times of the Queen’s attempts on his life, shove a heavy wooden sword into his little fist and tell him to swing at his sister- were all explained with:  _ “You are my son. You have my blood and I’ll not let my only son become less than a man.” _

So he grew used to the cold on his arms and despite his lean build, filled those thin sleeves with able muscle, he got big enough to resist the Queen’s offenses (smart enough to have his food and drink tested too), and those stick swords became steel, his targets became bigger and soon he found himself titled by his growing baby sister- the only warmth of blood he ever knew.

_ The man whose long, chestnut hair was now scattered and hacked around him was dragged away from the center of the floor- the woman who had come before him did not fare so lucky. Blood spewed from somewhere beneath his bleached robes. Ingar wondered if Elsa had hid her face in her mother’s skirts when they carved him like a roast pig- he wished he could- the sight was sickening and twisting with the intensity of the man’s screams- but he knew the Queen would rather smother him in her skirts than shield him in them. Elsa would kick his shins, his baby sister would probably rather wail at his disturbance than shouts of pain… and his father would unname him amongst other things. He didn’t know what was worse, but the choice to watch a bloody show for the hungry Gods was one easy to make.  _

_ Once the circle was clear of all but blood and the fresh ghost of suffering, the Swords of the city Temple lifted a boy not much bigger than a newborn into that spot of atonement. He didn’t recognise him as a boy from Aren Fell but if he was brought to this place from anywhere he must have been a sinner. _

And they said the bastard’s fate was the worst.

The three of them continued down the ornate hall, the sworn swordsmen behind them, “Neither Gods nor men will touch you, sweet sister. Lest they learn that a Princess’ wrath is nothing compared to the  _ Master _ charged with swinging the sword that is o’ so  _ merciful _ .” Ingar made sure that Lord Robyn heard his promise too.   
He reflected on that moment for a second. When his little sister abandoned her honor and instead of calling upon the Queen’s Swords or himself, she took the Queen’s justice into her own hands. If they still followed the old Gods he wondered if he’d liken her to The Just Father or The Mother of Mercy- if Gods lived in the skin of man, she’d be their child.

“Plenty defines sin, Princess. Waking up with white in your hair does not occur in the mix.” Lord Robyn went to take Anna’s other arm but Ingar glowered at him over Anna’s head and his arm was quick to retreat back between the folds of his gown.

The click of their heels rolling around the magnificent sculpted walls of the Temple rung like the crack of a bell, honouring their presence. Anna tremored with her unfamiliar purpose in that room. She had played watcher, and witness, and court - final judgements were left to the holy thoughts of the Duvote and his council of priests- but she had never played  _ the sinful victim _ .

Before Anna left the men and the comfort of her sworn swordsmen she clutched at the neckline of Ingar’s shirt, “You’ll stay nearby?”

He kissed a spot on her hairline that was well away from that impure whiteness, “My hand will be on my sword the whole time, sister.” 

And with that she made her way, one step at a time, into the sunken circle hollowed in the centre of the great room. 

The Duvote’s entrance was humble, his unburdened and calloused feet pattering against the polished tile floor like little drops of rain down a well, the chains that festooned his body chiming with an eerie rattle. He descended a few steps rather than staying at ground level, “My Princess.” Anna bowed deeper than Ingar had ever seen in her lifetime. She had been indifferent to the Duvote’s status before, but the weight of his influence pushed her close to the floor. “Rise, child.” She did and met his eye with a little tear in her own. Ingar’s hold on the hilt of his sword tightened. “Why do you stand in the sinner’s circle, child?”

Anna swallowed, a rumble in the silence, and reached to untie her braid with one hand. It cascaded gently, unset in waves with its little time being tied out of sight, that streak of white crisp against a burning umber. 

The Duvote hummed, eyes narrowed, and lifted his bony fingers to the lock of offensive hair, tracing it from her scalp to its tip. His eyes wandered directly to Ingar before Anna spoke up, “I woke up with it, your holiness.”

“And you think it is a mark of sin?” He took one step back from her, “Have you sins to confess?”

She shook her head, “No.”

“You took the Queen’s justice for your own. Your mother lay in ash and sea. The only blood you have in this world is that you take and that of which is half yours.” He nodded to her, chains clanking with the gentile of his movement, “That is no mark of sin, Princess.”

Her hair weighed less on her shoulders and she straightened a little, “Then what is it a mark of?”

“You took the blood that was owed to you by the laws of justice. But what is justice?” He began to pace around her and Ingar braced himself to bear witness for what was going to be a harrowing monologue. “We like to think that justice is the natural order written by the Gods. If that were so, why are summer babes taken by winter when summer never takes back? The earth does not cry back to the skies after rain. Nay, Gods aren’t just- that is  _ why _ they are Gods. Justice is the product of man, child. We seek our own justice for the Gods. Man takes what is owed to him by  _ honour _ -of what the Gods do not give him. We shape the justice of our world, my Lady.”

“My hair is just?” Anna’s brow was creased in confusion but the swell of emotion in her eyes was understanding.

He touched the strand again, “This is no work of the Gods, Princess. Your mother is gone, your father too. The only blood you have left is yours by half. Your Queen sister’s hair white like ashen snow, your bastard brother’s like white gold.” His fingers moved to thread through the natural red of the rest of her hair, “Princess Anna- _ the flame amidst the snow _ \- your bond is stronger to your siblings now with hair for Godly ties. Its origin, a mystery- perhaps forever- but do not be mistaken that it  _ is _ a gift from the Gods. It speaks no justice but an uncherished holy gift  _ will  _ demand the justice of a trial.”

Anna’s lips pressed into what was almost a smile, “I’ll bear it with pride, your holiness.” the edge had returned to her voice.

He nodded, “Good,” he offered an arm to her and led her back up the steps to the side of Ingar, “It will look splendid woven into your braids  _ properly _ .”

Ingar took Anna’s arm again and didn’t miss a beat, “We’ll see to its rightful exhibition.” He bowed only his head to the man, “Thankyou for your holy council, Duvote.” He turned on his heel and left in quick stride, the swordsmen following swiftly, leaving Lord Robyn to trail behind.

  
  


Ingar partook from the glass of wine he rested against his lips as he let the wind that carried the aroma of the city below fill his lungs and dance in his free hair. When it would usually be twisted or slicked black, he amused himself in letting it fall loose. It was slightly longer now, the priests or doctors might tell him it was because of the coming cold- the time when a winter child flourishes. The only flaw in that fable was that he was a late-summer child. 

The door to Anna’s chambers opened,“My Lady, my Lord.” he turned promptly and stepped back through the gossamer curtains that lined the inside of the balcony doors. Those doors spent all the time they could being open before their boarded-up fate when the worst of winter came. 

Anna stood up from her chair, placing her mother’s mirror down and waving away her handmaiden’s fingers from her hair.

The squire at the door did not enter the room, “Word from the Sunder - the Queen nears Aren Fell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are about to get real! (spot the obvious game of thrones references heheh)  
> as always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are planning to stick around for the drama to come :)  
> thanks for reading x


	14. When Mountains Bleed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: implied infant death

Moments like these made her wish she chose the life of a mother. The thought of her twin brother spending dusks and dawns warmed by his pretty bride always looked like the better path until she got close enough to catch onto the stench of bindings. Becoming a mother meant accepting that your child might become warg food. 

When her newborn sister, Vera, was stolen in the jaws of one of those furred demons and her father followed, her mother did not sleep for three moons- not because of any tradition, but because a piece of her died that mournful day. Wolf Smerte did not come for her life, Bulda was as fierce a fighter as a mother- pain itself would not be her downfall, not when it was her strongest shield. Her mother’s heart had remained twice-broken since then.

Loving more meant losing more and a mother had no choice but to love her children.

_ Or so the saying would go... _

She trudged further through the undisturbed snow of the true northern mountains, pressing the puny babe closer against her heart. This child’s mother, though she  _ loved _ her child, freely gave her away when she accepted that her ugly, contorted form had survived all the trials of living one year. Instead of raising her despite her deformities or feeding her to beast or warg and ending the child’s life with the  _ mercy _ that the Mother demanded- the babe lay in the sacrificial margin of their morality.

Livili’s only weapon knocked against her leg with every step- her own father’s long spear, notched from generations of honest use and tipped with a carved warg rib that came to a deadly, strong point- slung by leather strap across one shoulder.

It was the only thing he left behind- a man of few possessions and a half carved mantel- when he bolted from lopping wood blocks for kindling, to chase that greedy demon and the wails of his newborn daughter.

She put its use to shame now, stabbing any stray warg who might come searching for the smell of the gentle sap of the babe she was to offer to another. 

If she were a mother, she’d only surrender her babe if she already laid in waste. 

Nothing in that moment could stop her from taking that life  _ and _ the child in her arms and running as far as her numb legs would carry her. Maybe she’d make it to Atallheimr before every organ in her body gave way to all the Father’s Wolves at once… and then those people would send that mangled, frozen babe up the Nordfjellet to the same fate. 

She considered this each time she climbed the mountain.

The baby cooed from her little rabbit fur sling, raising a tiny, pink fist out into the biting cold air. A true Northern fighter. 

Livili mimicked her noise and tucked that little arm back between the cosy fibers, “ **Easy, little one, it’s no race to the top.** ” The babe gurgled again in objective response- if only she knew what awaited her at the top. “ **It’s a shame you’ll never have a name day.** ” The babe carried on replying to Livili’s words, it comforted both of them in the thin air. “ **I’d wager you would have been named like a warrior.** ” the babe agreed and Livili chuckled, the sound rougher than usual, “ **Maybe** **_Borghildr_ ** **like the goddess who slays the sun with her mists of evening or** **_Gerdr_ ** **\- oh, you don’t like that one?** ” She looked down to see her mashed face twist in distaste, “ **I like Borghildr better too, little one.** ”

Livili stopped her ascent for a moment to turn around and look out across the landscape. The mountain ranges below sloped easily, unlike the mountain she was climbing, lined with trees and promising little else. Looking further between the valleys of the tapering mountains she traced her path back to Ahtohall, and then further to the outline of the Winterwoods, the North side of the Iron Fjord sticking up in the middle of it. From here the Winterwoods always looked smaller despite that passing through them meant an entire change in season- no matter what it was beyond the woods, it was always colder in the North.

She turned back to her task and continued to trek. They were nearing the mountain’s flat shoulder where snow-covered rock turned into ice and inset stone steps became part of the rough cliff face. 

The babe had turned silent so she quickly checked she was still alive and not already claimed by Wolf Kald, but she was still rosy-cheeked and breathing, “ **Almost there, Borghildr.** ”

Livili knew it was a mistake to name the children she carried- naming them made them real, they were her kin and blood deserved a name- yet it never failed making her duty more heartbreaking. That was why they were never named under the Gods or by their mothers, to name a child was to claim it and own them. Her own name a badge of family and blood, Livili, for her mother’s mother, and Bjargson, to honour her under her father’s protection. 

When she was younger she wished for a prettier name, one that eased the image of a stout girl already growing taller than her twin brother.  _ “ _ **_Giant’s blood._ ** _ ” _ her mother would tell her,  _ “ _ **_Troll child!_ ** _ ”  _ screamed the other children. Maybe if she were named  _ Liyanna _ or  _ Lisa _ they’d attach her thickness to softness and not brutality. 

She remembered running home, tears down her cheeks, and into the arms of her father as he hefted a fresh fallow deer body onto the outside carving table.

_ His eyes turned to pools of flowing honey when he saw her,“ _ **_My little fawn, what’s wong_ ** _?” he easily scooped her up and sat her on the table in front of him. _

_ Livili hiccuped through her sobs, “ _ **_I-Iren said that next summer they might mistake me for- for a winter boar and throw me in the wrestling pit._ ** _ ”  _

_ He cupped her damp cheek and stroked a rough thumb across her tear tracks, “ _ **_Well then, I’d say the woman who would wrestle you has a lot to worry about then._ ** _ ” _

_ She hiccuped again, her face stayed screwed in sorrow,“ _ **_B-but, father, I don’t want to be a boar- I want to be a beautiful woman like mother._ ** _ ” _

_ He grinned brilliantly at her, planting a little kiss to her furrowed brow, “ _ **_No worry on that account, my love._ ** _ ” her eyes still drooped low so he stepped away from her and picked up his antler-handled knife, beginning to flay the animal, “ _ **_See those mountains, little fawn?_ ** _ ” he nodded his head to the mountainscape in the distance. Livili nodded, wiping her runny nose on the hide of her sleeve. “ _ **_And see how now, in the late light of the day we’re cast in their shadow, what do you think is on the sunny side of those great rocks?_ ** _ ” _

_ She watched his work on the carcass, “ _ **_More snow?_ ** _ ” _

_ Bjarg laughed as he pulled the deer’s skin back further from its flesh and smiled at his daughter, “ _ **_Shining snow from which grows hundreds of beautiful, golden and violet flowers that put any flower down here to shame._ ** _ ” She shifted, ashamed of her confusion. He wiped his bloodied hands on the linen cloth handy on the table and hoisted her up so that she was standing on the wooden surface, only a little taller than him, “ _ **_Tall, great, and strong mountains love to hide their beauty from us, cliffs are scary and dangerous but the flowers that grow there remind us of the beauty in the Gods’ will of nature._ ** _ ” and he folded her into a tight hug. _

Since then she took no pride greater than that of her strong and wide body, her father’s words lingering beyond his life- like his spear- weathered and worn but still sturdy and powerful. 

But his words became questionable upon the first time she climbed the mountains- there was no trace of golden or violet flowers, only more of the same snow and trees and cold she had always known. And so she wondered how beautiful he’d call her now that she carried out such monstrous deeds.

They had climbed the icy steps by the time Livili had finished dwelling in sweet memories of the past. She only wished that she didn’t have to do such shameful things so close to the stars where he could look down on her more clearly. 

Looking up, the Nordfjellet’s great summit loomed far over the shoulder of the mountain that they now found themselves on. The thickness of the mist that rolled and tumbled off the edge filled the space and hid the sheer number of trees that reached higher than any near Ahtohall, and as she edged through the mist, outlines appeared. First the lines of a wooden fence festooned with bony garlands and dented with the shapes of mangled runes that she didn’t know how to read. 

Borghildr stirred at her breast and she shushed her, “ **Here is no place for warriors, little one. We must be still.** ” Livili walked slowly through the gateway crowned with mysterious animal skulls, following the orange glow of light through the snow until she came upon a towering wooden house. It resembled the ones she knew back home but instead of being lulled into comfort by the welcome and the promise of a fire like the ones she knew, this one only stirred her to the depths of her gut.

The woman who emerged from it pulled a much fouler feeling from her. She was ghastly and white, the cold and her years had whitened her skin to the point where you couldn’t tell what was covered in ice or what was  _ once _ human. There was no blood in her cheeks or life in her step as she shuffled closer to them, but there was urgency in her fingers as she reached out both her arms to Livili. Her face haunted even her dreamless sleep with those deep scratches that circled and struck where her eyes would have been set deep and equally as empty as the rest of her.

She whispered in a language that was as forgien as her runes but Livili knew what she was asking for.

With shaking hands, Livili reached into the rabbit fur sling and pulled the little babe out, the extent of her little, deformed frame finally naked in the light from the large cabin. She tried not to let her tearing eyes linger on her tiny, confused face, as she placed her into the corpse-like hands before her. 

Before Livili could turn away first, the  _ woman _ had snatched up the child and gone back into the house.

  
  


There were too many rumours of what happened to broken babes who were given to The White Women of the Mountain. Some said they were cooked into horrible brews and eaten, others said they raised them to become more White Women. But Livili always knew different, she knew the  _ truth _ .

There was a new air in her lungs as she left back through the wooden fence and descended down the ice steps. She turned, once she was down the mountain by a few hundred paces, to catch the sight of a white shape moving slowly up to the Nordfjellet’s peak.

_ That _ was the fate of broken babes. Sacrifices to The Ghost, another woman in white on this mountain but  _ She _ was never even once human.    
By giving The Ghost the warmth of a body, the Gotthi assured that the next winter wouldn’t be so harsh and the wargs would prowl less and summer in the North would last three whole generations and malformed babes would be allowed to live more than a year. But either The Ghost found all these warm, sweet babes to be insufficient or her mother and the other Gotthi were liars.

Livili didn’t know which she’d rather believe.

She let her tears freeze on her cheeks freely then with nothing but the cold wind to witness her softness. At least the cries that were sure to fly from the summit did not travel, else she would have been rendered too weak for this duty years ago. But the mountain cried with her, it’s tears already hills of snow and rivers of ice, until she reached the smattering of trees that thickened into the basin of the mountain in half the time it took for her to climb the great thing.

Livili’s first step into the thicket was met with another to her right. She knew better than to take chances and brandished her spear. 

And then she realised her mistake- when every other time she’d discard the rabbit fur sling somewhere in the misted forest of the White Women, now she still had it- and it wafted with the warm butter scent of a small babe.

A smell irresistible to only one beast- and that beast, a great, white warg with blazing eyes like unmerciful fire was now breathing in her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops this one turned out to be only one pov again and 2k words but I hope that's ok! For once I felt like giving a bit more gritty context as to why things were the way they were in the North instead of ending on a cliffhanger (which I did anyways). but don't worry, there's still a lot to be learnt about the Northfolk and their way of life ;)
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, do feel free to leave feedback of any kind and I hope you didn't get as sad as I did writing this x


	15. The Hand that Leads

Though his brother didn’t weigh much more than him, his dead weight set Kristoff to the back of the carefully moving group. Kristoff didn’t have the  _ gift _ of spiritwalking but growing up so close to Mortu he grew familiar to its ways. Sometimes he’d stay walking for days, but Kristoff also remembered a time when two summers passed and his brother didn’t even  _ dream _ of bears. 

He’d grown up hearing the stories of what it was like to look through the eyes of an animal, to feel the cold in a different body and escape the chains of northern humanity for just a moment.

Kristoff frowned at the thought and hitched up his brother’s body that was straddling his back. Mortu offered only a sound at the movement, his eyes still far back into his skull and fingers twitching.

No gift, no “blessing” in this world was free, and that of spiritwalking was certainly no small expense to man. Mortu would often wake from his wanderings in searing sweats or blood-curdling screams, sometimes his skin would turn colder than his father’s ever was when he returned from a week’s hunt. Reasons and recounts were lost on his brother’s lips when his dreams started turning to terrors, and Kristoff ceased to learn anymore what it was like. Jarri and Livili, his oldest twin siblings also spiritwalked, but the three years between he and them was distance enough for them to keep their experiences and stories from him. 

Now they were moving out of the world of snowy bears to where they were black like charcoal or flecked with the colours of deep earth and Kristoff found himself worrying if the Southern bears would accept Mortu in their bodies. His mother assured them that should anything go wrong while spiritwalking the body of the walker would tremble and shake and jerk until the only honourable thing to do was end their suffering with either something very heavy or something very sharp. 

He didn’t want it to come to that, and so he thought of ways to keep an eye on Mortu and try to sway him from spiritwalking as much as possible the further south they went.

Kristoff had advised that they all shed their heavy furs that denoted them as northerners, dumping them into a deep hole Maren dug into the easy earth. They kept thinner hide layers and moved them to the inside of their shirts and trousers, the leather boots they wore were also safe, as were the little weapons and goods they carried in pouches and satchels. It was cold this side of the Winterwoods but nothing like the colds they knew in the North, so they could perhaps  _ just _ pass as a group of wandering vagabonds with not enough sense to tan or steal and proper fur clothing.

Kristoff had also shrugged off the woolen coat that the giant ginger man, Ander Oaken gave to him, and wrapped Mortu’s shoulders with it. It fit his brother’s shoulders much better than his own, they had always said that Kristoff and Mortu were the two sides of the mountain they spawned from- one was towering and the other broad. He couldn’t exactly pull the book from the pocket of the coat without an onslaught of questions, for its origin would no doubt warrant a fire from his company, but he supposed it was safe enough over Mortu’s unconscious form. 

  
  


“ **Be still.** ” Ryder hushed with a raised hand. The cover of the bush hid them from the sight of the main road that led to Swanton hold and The Arm. But now they planned to come into the open in order to pass through the borders of a green city he didn’t recognise- the bounds of his knowledge on Southern lands only went as far as Aren Fell, but the world was quickly proving to be much bigger already.

There was a horde of people moving into the city from the bustle of the markets that lined the firm yellowstone walls that lay between common streets and trading ones. Traders left stalls, merchants left all but coins, and those with nothing acquired the best spots in the littlest time. 

“ **What are they doing?** ” Diina whispered.

“ **They’re-** ” Ryder watched their movements for another moment. They were forming a wall of spectators along the main dirt path. 

Maren stood up, turning to Kristoff and Diina, “ **We can slip through their crowd if we stick to the back and keep our heads down.** ”

Kristoff remembered the time just passed that he had to move through a foriegn crowd- he was recognised as a Northerner by what could have been the only person in that entire city who didn’t want to take his head-  _ or rather couldn’t take it _ . 

But that was lucky, he could pass for a lone giant man, a stranger, outcasts in communities were not of suspicion- not when here, south of the Winterwoods, it wasn’t a death sentence to be born different- but in a group of tall and built young men and women with an intransed man on his back, they were certain to gain some unwanted attention. 

There was also the point of their accents, strangled in unaccustomed temperatures and not confident in the common tongue- not talking was a  _ very _ good idea. Even better as both Ryder and Maren came from Andifold, the northern village farthest from the winterwoods, before the mountains, and  _ firmest _ in not partaking in learning much of anything about enemies to the South.

“ **If it comes to it, let me do the talking.** ” they turned to look at him, Ryder straightening from his place in the shrubbery, “ **I got by in Aren Fell- and got out-** ” Kristoff glanced down to Diina, he would have placed a hand on her shoulder if he had one to spare, “ **Maren will lead.** ”

…

She must’ve looked a sight, riding back through Jadeen only a week after she had crossed through on her way to The South. Elsa rode now with two bannermen and two of her knights at her sides, her snow-white horse and the flapping banners of her family sigil disrupted the order of Jadeen and they slowed to a trot through the streets as people crowded and craned to look at her. 

They had ridden through the night so Elsa had no patience to stay and speak or even wave, but if her  _ father _ had taught her anything it was that rulers didn’t need to give reasons- nor did they owe a common kindness to their people…

_ “When you are married you will be able to fall into a position befitting you. But for now child,” he corrected her posture in the mirror, “you are the future of your family. Did your father tell you what that means?”  _

_ Elsa blanked, falling away into her own little reflection. She didn’t know what he was asking. Her father before him told her many things- but they were all wrong in this one’s eyes. She tried anyway, hoping that maybe her real father- her late father- had been right about something, “Father told me that I will be Queen someday.” _

_ “A good one?” He challenged her. A wrong answer meant a lesson. And her arm still hurt from sparring with Ingar that morning. _

_ Elsa nodded despite herself, “I want to be a good one.” _

_ Agnarr nodded too, grip hardened on her shoulders, “A good Queen is good to her King, gifts him sons, and stays faithful to him.” _

_ Her late father told her similar things, but those same things sounded different now- scary almost. _

_ “But before you take a husband you must establish yourself as a strong queen. This family cannot afford to succumb to the expectations of those below us- not anymore.” _

“What’s the matter with you- you giant oaf?!” Elsa was pulled from darkening thoughts at the disturbance in the crowd. She considered leaving Jadeen order to its own but a knife was pulled on the offender and the younger- and stupider- one of her knights had already come down off his horse to intervene. 

“What’s the trouble here?” He asked them, the woman holding a knife lowered it, her apparent assailant, a larger woman looked like she was about to bolt. Like a stricken deer.

She was like no woman Elsa had ever seen. She had seen women bigger than her but not women that were bigger than that of men.

The equally giant man beside her, who, she realised was carrying another man on his back, was quick to step in, “Apologies, my lord, my cousin is unused to crowds.”

“ _ Ser. _ ” The knight snapped and Elsa could hear his teeth clench through his helmet. “You come from a place where you do not know how to address a knight?”

What would have been a little public scuffle was quickly turning into a battle for pride-  _ “... a strong Queen...”  _

Strength was control.

Elsa turned her head to her other knight, voice level and quiet, “Ser Qen, take my horse.” He did so and Elsa swiftly dismounted her horse. “Ser Lierwell, move aside.” He did so too, bowing as she passed him to stand before these strangers. 

The woman looked even bigger now, before her. She had long, dark hair, like the man by her other side, that fell over honey coloured eyes.

“Where are you from?” Elsa asked the woman. 

The honey-eyed woman blushed and froze a little, stepping back so that the blonde man could answer for her, “West of here, from across the red sea.”

“I don’t remember asking you.” 

He stood down rather uneasily at that. Stuck in a deep pit of masculinity and what could have only been the contempt for a woman’s scorn. She had a good mind to make good on her reputation for leading men around cities with their cocks tied to horses. 

But the honey woman spoke, “West, my grace.”

Elsa’s anger melted slightly, but her composure did not fall, “How far West?”

She looked unsure then, like she wasn’t sure herself. But she settled for, “Far.”

“And where are you all headed now?” Elsa looked to the blonde man, who she finally gathered was the strongest of the common tongue- although she struggled to place their accents to the West of their lands.  _ How far was “Far” West? _

“South, your grace,” His eyes flickered to her crown, “for work and board.”

Elsa looked at them all, they were easily an army of four- even the dead-looking one on the blonde’s back looked like he could tower any man around-  _ five _ , and she got an idea, “What if I offered you all a place in my Queen’s Guard? Armed you and had you sworn to protect me and my blood?”

The honey woman’s fists clenched hard and Ser Lierwell’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. The blonde man shook his head, a half-bow, “You honour us, your grace but we are less than fit for your service.” 

As if on cue, the man on his back shook and let out an incoherent string of sounds that sounded like no language she’d ever heard.

“What’s wrong with that one?” Ser Lierwell pointed to the one on the blonde man’s back.

The same blonde man smiled- she picked out its fakeness- “Our friend suffers from terrible fits, that’s why it is important for us to continue South for the healers there.” 

The honey woman’s expression fell blank as was the rest of her comrades. But there was something bubbling beneath them, passion and fury, and pure strength- strength she admittedly was dying to witness the bounds of.

Elsa studied each of them. Sizing them up and locking the details of the giant, honey-eyed woman to the depths of the memory, “Family, Duty, Honor.” She turned back to her horse, Ser Qen already cupping his hands to help her mount it, but she stopped and willed her influence into those honey-brown eyes a last time, “Family comes first, but once you are done in the South see to your journey to Aren Fell for duty and honor.” She swept her skirts to the side with learned ease and mounted her horse. Elsa hardly waited for Ser Lierwell and Ser Qen to mount their own horses before clipping her reins, “And I’ll be the one to judge how fit you are for my service.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and look at that! elsamaren kindling in pride month of all things unplanned!!! Happy Pride <3  
> I hope you enjoyed this one :)


	16. A Mother's Love

“ **Sister!** ” He dropped his axe and bounded over to her in a second. Unlike she knew him in their shared childhood, he was as big as she was both in height and girth now. He wrapped his arms around her and tugged her as close to his chest as possible. Livili found a familiar comfort there in the fur over his shoulder and was content to lose a moment there. 

Livili looked at the scene behind her brother, the picture of a sapling family; a humble house on the skirts of Ahtohall, it looked like the one the one she remembered from her childhood- complete with the sight of half chopped wood intended to warm a young father’s kin.

Lvili almost burst into tears at the vision in front of her, but her brother saved her from such shame by pulling back from her just as the sting hit the back of her throat. Járri kept her within reach of his arms, “ **It feels like moons since I saw you last.”**

“ **It might as well be moons.** ” Livili took a deep breath of the air, it did to calm and unnerve her at once, “ **The Father’s Wolves come with The Ghost and so I’ll only have more to carry.** ”

“ **You’ve spent too much time with only mother’s words to rattle in your brain, sister.** ” He patted her back and coaxed her further into the bounds of the fence that surrounded his little keep. She went willingly, eased under the softness of his hand that was always there. “ **The harshness of winter is only just arriving, now is a time to hold to the warmth around us.** ”

Járri had always been a dreamer. He possessed the will of warmth and love like their father did.

Like the true spawn of their father, both Járri and Livili carried on his image- not one of looks for they both more closely resembled their mother and later siblings, Mortu and Kristoff, would take after the face of Bjarg- but the image of the deer. 

Járri showed signs of spiritwalking far before Livili, but he didn’t dream of the same stags that his father did, rather, he saw does. Which, when she thought back to boy-Járri who spent time in summer picking sour weeds for their mother, a doe fit him far better than a great antlered creature.  _ That _ was her; her’s were dreams of impaling contending stags and animals with her tough crown of thorns, dreams of running from wolves and getting slaughtered by wargs plagued even in her waking hours. She knew Járri saw these things too in the eyes of deer, saw his sister and his father in the animals he hunted and carried home. Livili could see it in his eyes, spiritwalking was no gift, but it had made him the clone of his father’s character- strong, always a soft place to land.

He led her into his home, pushing the heavy door aside for her to enter before him.

Járri’s pretty wife sat by the gentle fire in their hearth where she worked at a tablet woven sash, looking up as two figures the size of her husband entered the room. 

Her eyes brightened when she recognised who the second was, “ **Livili!** ” and she dropped the threads from her fingers to cross the room and embrace her.

“ **Blood of my blood, I’ve prayed for the health of your babe since the night I left with the ill one in my arms.** ” 

Ina pulled back from Livili with lips turned down. Járri clapped his hand on her shoulder, moving then to unburden her from the makeshift bag on her back, leaving it by the threshold. He left Bjarg’s spear in her hand, “ **Did I not tell you, wife, that my sister would still be functioning on the dregs of my mother’s words?** ”

Ina nodded, smiling only slightly and guided Livili to sit by the fire with her little hand on her back, the other coming protectively to the bump at her gut, “ **Aye,** ” her gaze lingered on the loom of her weaving- perhaps considering returning to her work, perhaps gaping at how alien it looked next to a woman like Livili- “ **I’m thankful for such prayers, but unused to such dark words that stir dark thoughts is all** .” Ina decided on her actions and carried her loom away from the hearth. 

“ **Have you been to see mother since you returned?** ” Járri asked, casting what Livili guessed was a weighted look to his wife. A silent sentence easily transferred in passing between man and wife- a secret, a warning?

Livili ignored it, pulling off her thick gloves instead to inspect the blood that had found its way under her nails, “ **Nay, I dread what is to come of it.** ” 

“ **You delivered the ill one?** ”  _ Naming children made them real. _ Borghildr was realer than the God that demanded her- she had weight and a voice more than wind and-- a pulse.

“ **I did.** ” She wedged a nail under her tooth and worked at the dry blood there; if it were her blood, its metal taste was heavied with sin, if not  _ her _ blood, it was a sin to taste it.

“ **Then why delay?** **Mother’s children are scattered to the winds, I’m sure she’d find nothing but joy in hearing your story of safe return from your own breath.** ” 

“ **Because I have something for your little family.** ” Livili crossed the small room and took the bundle of wrapped leather by the door to set it on the table, leaving the spear in its place. She looked to Járri as he followed her, “ **Shut the windows.** ”

He nodded and did so, Ina moving the scattering of objects on the table to make room for what Livili would unfold.

She unbound the cord wrapped around the leather package and let the folded contents relax before spreading it mostly across the table. It was a gigantic, white pelt- already tanned on one side and free of any blood that was  _ certainly _ spilt.

Ina ran a hand through the thickness of the hair, “ **A wolf pelt?** ”

But Járri knew what it was, “ **Livili, you cannot give this to us.** ”

“ **I can, I will and** **_I do_ ** **. If they ask, you’ll say it is a sewn blanket of a litter’s hides that I killed for you.** ”

It would have been poetic to keep the hide of the beast that almost killed her on her journey back to Ahtohall- but it was too big for her back alone and it would not have suited her home. 

It was no exaggeration that a warg pelt could cover a man and his entire family- but to call them beasts of the winter and liken them to wolves seemed like an insult to the Son of the Forest- or whomever was the creator of wolves that were not giant and demonic  _ or _ of the Father’s three.

But Livili had no family of her own, none to protect other than her little siblings who were set on finding their own way in the cold, on building their own hearths and seeking the stories and glory for which they’d carve there someday. 

Such a monstrous fur would keep her warm  _ and _ fill her heart with the satisfying pleasure of revenge and spite for all that wargs took- and almost took- from her, but her home wasn’t her own. As she had no husband or family she stayed with her mother, Bulda- which she enjoyed as it meant she could look after her mother in the passing years, but it also meant that she’d spend days that she wasn’t carrying ill babes among the paraphernalia that justified it. Her Gotthi mother would not take well to a warg fur under her roof.

  
  


Járri was soon outside again to resume chopping wood, a stern look on his face as he left and she could hear its gravity in the way the wood split. 

Ina’s hand never left the warg pelt save for the second it took to pour Livili a mug of mead, “ **But why the pelt of a warg, Livili?** **Many gifts offer protection.** ”

After taking a meek sip, Livili swirled what was left of the drink around in the cup, “ **Aye, but you and your family will need all the warmth and strength and protection offerable, as winter is only coming colder every day. A wargs fur offers twice in warmth and ward.** ” 

“ **You’d best not let that fall on Jarri’s ear.** ” Ina didn’t sound in the least bit  _ scared _ of Járri- there was jest in her tone, but it was careful, deliberate. 

So Livili chose to be careful too, “ **Best not repeat it to him then. As kind as I know my brother to be, I know him also as a man like any other- proud and drunk on the wines of virility.** ” 

Ina retracted her fingers from the fur, leaning closer to Livili, “ **Blood of my blood- pardon, at the risk of sounding insulting-** ” _the usual precursor for insults_ , “ **but surely you’d be happier with a child of your own to care for, a husband?** ”

Livili could have stormed out at that. At the notion that Borghildr and those she had carried before her:  _ Warrek _ ,  _ Daarik _ ,  _ Luta _ \- were anything but her children. And as for taking a  _ husband _ \- “ **I’ve learnt to brush off insults, don’t worry on account of my fragility. But you are misinformed.** ”

Her hand had found the curve of her belly and Livili was drawn to follow the movement with a heaving gaze, “ **And yet your gaze on my swelling is longing. What is clear in the eyes is only clearer in the heart.** ”

A floaty phrase, “ **Who told you that?** ”

“ **My mother.** ”

She stifled a choke at that. A sentiment as old as time that she, herself, was not immune to; every little girl wanted to be like her mother- wanted to mend clothes and warm homes with fires and thick soups and protect babies and husbands and the like. Honorable indeed, but her opinion on mothers was one of fast decline. 

She truly loved Ina, the girl made her brother happy and her gift of a child to him would send his spirits above the clouds. Love was the only thing affluent in The North other than snow and death, but sometimes love was the death of morality. _And morality the death of love._

“ **You are her reflection no doubt, strong and pretty. But I’m afraid I lack much that makes a mother the woman her kin wants to reflect.** ”

  
  


When Livili made it home the sun had just fallen below the mountain line, Ina had lit her a lantern for her trek and bid with Járri that she visit them soon again. 

She opened the door and stepped inside to be met with smells of rosemary and fresh pine. The smell tickled her nose and brought a wave of tiredness over her, “ **Mother?** ” 

Bulda emerged quickly from a curtain of snowy bear fur, her hands stained and covered in little cuts. That explained the smell of pine and the mess of wood shavings on the table- her mother was skilled in a number of things but wood carving was not one of them. The carvings of Winterwood beasts she made only looked scarier with her clumsy, hacked shapes.  The older woman crossed the room in a second and flung her arms around Livili’s neck. 

Without hesitation, Livili pulled her into her arms, the urge to cry less so. 

  
  


“ **I’ve not heard from Mortu or Kristoff or Diina since they left the night after you did.** ” 

Bulda lifted the kettle from the fire but Livili was quick to take it in her grip, eyes brushing over the marks and imprints in the mantel, remembering how they felt to touch, “ **They really think they’ll find the Stolen Body?** ”

A rare smile pulled at Bulda’s lips, “ **You know the men in this family to be slaves to the temptation of legacy.** ”

“ **And Diina?** ” Livili hadn’t thought about her sisters in a while. She thought of young Nora, remembering the state she was in when Livili left- in bed, covered in furs and flush with the fever of spiritwalking.

“ **She’s just a girl. You remember Maarja at twenty.** ”

Maarja, her first little sister, was boisterous and stubborn and quicker to both than her or Járri. At only four years old, during the last summer year, she had leapt bare from the bath trough and bolted around Ahtohall and finally to the treeline of the Winterwoods with Bulda in toe, towel in arms. At twenty, she had cut her hair and snuck off to the hot springs in Northaw with a group of young Northern men and women, among other things. Now twenty-four she worked with hunters and traders, hair growing out but still insistent on her way of life.

Diina wasn’t like Maarja.

“ **Maarja never followed Járri or me around.** ” Diina was attached to Kristoff and Mortu, she’d follow them no matter where they went, the South now apparently as appealing as their games.

Bulda silently held a shallow bowl in front of her, staying lost in thought as Livili filled the bowl with boiling water. She then dropped a few things in it, salt, rosemary and mountainfire, and took it into another curtained room.

Livili lingered at the doorway, waiting for Bulda to place the bowl in the centre of the room, before she came straight to the bedside of her fevered sister. She brushed ebony strands of hair away from her brow and replaced them with a kiss while her mother fanned the fumes of the mixture around the room, “ **Still only hawks?** ”

Bulda’s fingers came to her shoulder after checking the tightness of the blankets around Nora, “ **Only hawks. I doubt she’ll see into the beasts.** ”

Livili followed her out the room again, “ **Has anyone seen through them recently?** ” 

“ **Broddi did, you remember him,** ”  _ Broddi, a boy she remembered being on the receiving end of Járri’s fist after a wayward remark one year after their father died _ \-  _ who happened to bear a rare gift,  _ “ **He saw them from Northpass, said the lot of them were taken, Luras and his children too… all of them taken by Ironbarers.** ” Bulda choked on the last word. “ **So I sent them the gift of a curse.** ”

“ **In whose name?** ” Livili dreaded who her mother would name-

“ **The Ghost of the Mountain and the Mother of Fire and Mercy- to take from those that would harm your siblings.** ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one took me a bit because I was weirdly particular about establishing Livili's relationships with mainly her brother, his wife and Bulda.  
> I hope it came across as grey esp for bulda considering the conflict of morality there but she's Livili's mother so ya know, blood and stuff.
> 
> Also I hope I didn't go overboard with diving into backstories around other siblings that haven't had "screen time" yet- I've still gotta cover Isa sooooo whoop whoop for side ocs!
> 
> thanks as always for reading and putting up with my endless will to make more ocs in what is by core a ka au.


	17. Welcome Home

Anxiously, she fiddled with the white thread in her hair, tugging it again out of the style that Gerda had re-woven three times. The older handmaid sighed, nudging Anna’s fingers aside to re-thread the strand without unwinding the whole style, “My Lady, this is your own sister returning.” She must’ve been pointedly avoiding scolding Anna on her nerves. No doubt, the castle staff heard Ingar’s threatening tone against Lord Robyn- while the Lord was pious to his pride and bravery, sworn swords were not, and gossip often spread fast- so the maids and stewards saw safety in guarding their speech carefully until the Queen returned.

“My sister, the  _ Queen _ .” In Anna’s mind,  _ Queen _ always came before  _ sister _ \- the world seemed to prefer that order too.

Gerda said nothing to that, she clearly feared Elsa too- plenty more than Ingar. 

There was an Elsa that Anna insisted on remembering; a little girl with hair like ash and skin like snow, one that stopped to pick the flowering weeds that grew in the stone cracks of the castle garden path, a girl that skipped through the hallways and got lost in the corridors, that ran little fingers across the painted portraits that hung in the library and drawing rooms. But the line between Anna’s childhood and Elsa’s was blurred, there was growing question in the happy memories of her sister until the moment she realised the fist that held the weeds and swung with each skip and wandered across the paintings was her own. Anna then came to wonder if maybe the white hair in those memories was also her own, matching Elsa and Ingar’s as she was five before she looked in a mirror and remembered what she saw. 

As a growing girl, Anna liked to dream of reasons why her hair was so different: Perhaps a stray ember from a candle or fireplace caught in her hair and burnt it red. Or it was because of an invisible cut on her scalp, where a constant flow of blood stained her ashen hair. Or maybe it was because of the time Ingar tricked her into spinning around twice in the water of the fjord, telling her that it would make kidney pie (a dish she hated) taste like sweet cakes (it did not), and maybe instead it cursed her hair to be red as the water in the Iron Fjord came from the Red Sea. 

Eventually, it all sounded like fantastical fairy tale, similar to the ones her mother told her- of forest creatures that could turn to mountain or to flowing river as they pleased, or how the clouds in the sky were drifting smoke puffs that came from a sleeping dragon hiding under the sea- it was a comfort, it let her believe that she belonged in the middle of her brother and sister. But it was childish. The Gods didn’t allow more than the existence of two opposites; one God had white hair, the other black, one God was sea, the other land- there was no room for strange beasts in forests or dragons or magic water. 

Elsa never led on to entertain such ponderings or fables. The only games she played were the ones against Ingar, wooden sword in hand. The stories she learned were ones of lineage and blood and history. It was sometimes hard to believe that Elsa was once a small girl, as even in memories older than that of mirror reflections, she was poised and stoic, graceful and regal. Elsa was born to be a Queen. But she cultivated a ruthless reputation with an intimidating persona by creating more  _ public  _ methods of death, torture and humiliation for the worst of criminals than those used by the past Ardelle Kings and Queens. 

  
  


Anna made her own way outside the castle bounds to stand at the landing of the steps, between the two leaping-fox stone statues. She wore a long, flowing gown in a deep plum purple that was embroidered with the Ardelle house sigil along the skirt panels. While the Ardelle purple was claimed by her sister- and Anna usually wore their green- the occasion warranted the change in custom. Around her shoulders hung a thick woolen mantle, the more Anna-appropriate colour, and draped over that were two fox pelts, one white and the other red, their heads resting across her chest. Anna’s hair was pulled back into a low coil, the white streak bright and woven prominently into the style. 

She wished for Ingar to stand beside her on the landing but hesitated on insisting for him to do so, the scour on his face harsh and foreign to the expression she had seen more often in Elsa’s absence.

Anna had been a witness to their feuding and rivalry her whole life, it went beyond courtyard duels and kicks under the dining table, it was a matter of  _ blood _ \-- the only palpable thing that kept one from strangling the other, and the one thing that fueled mutual hatred. Thank the Gods for blood. Elsa and Ingar were cousins  _ and _ step siblings while Anna was a half sister to both by sharing mother and father respectively. She loved them both and feared neither, but the years had not been kind to either of them and what brewed between them would surely come to a head someday…

So it was easier to let him stand a few paces behind her as she waited anxiously to catch sight of the fox banners coming down King’s Way, the main road of Aren Fell that led from the bounds of the city walls to the foot of the steps to the castle. 

Lord Robyn kept Ingar’s left side and she was reminded of the seed of doubt her brother had planted in her mind. It was highly unlikely for Lord Robyn to have reason or desire to even plot to poison her or bewitch her hair and dreams-- but she remembered the descriptions he gave of the Gods he knew from The North, and how she had openly detested them and their followers. Lord Robyn was no longer a man of any Gods but everyone knew of the love that tore him from their devotion- and he had mentioned meeting a Northern Gotthi in his earlier life. 

Ingar’s voice in her head ceased as she saw it then- two fluttering banners carried by bannermen and two more riders she recognised as Sers Qen and Lierwell, all surrounding a white-haired woman on horseback, her golden crown glinting in the afternoon sun as she rode down King’s Way.

… 

Elsa urged her horse faster when she saw the figure waiting for her at the top of the stairs. The people-  _ her _ people- crowded on the edges of the streets as they did in Jadeen, again not in celebration of their returning Queen but with what she read as relief and even a thirst for revenge on some of their faces- they could smell a war and it was a Queen’s duty to feed her people. Passing The Wall and seeing the masses of unrecognisable flesh that hung there, rotten and bug-eaten, set a fresh wave of determined blood-lust over her- but that and the tired ache in her body was forgotten and soothed as was her stoic composure as she led her horse up the hundred stone steps that rose under the shadow of the castle, closer to her sister. In a second, she had dismounted from her horse and tucked her little sister in between her arms, the long, heavy fabric of her open sleeves enveloping Anna fully like the wings of a mother bird. 

Elsa felt the full weight of the burden that lay across Anna’s shoulders as she shook slightly against her, she envisioned herself lifting such darkness from her sister and placing it back upon her own where it belonged, and pulled her closer, tighter. 

What she saw when she opened her eyes from her view over Anna’s shoulder left her feeling cold again, and she pulled back at an arm’s length from her sister she finally took in her appearance- less of a girl as Elsa had ever seen her, eyes sunken and dull, a different colour of dress on her, hair pulled back, tight and low and-

One of her gloved fingers hooked under Anna’s chin, turning her whole head to the side so she could trace the strand of white hair from its root in bleached scalp to where it entwined into elaborate braiding, “Anna-”

Anna’s lips pushed up at the corners, a forced smile, “You’ve missed more than a funeral, dear sister.”

Elsa took no more words and with Anna under her arm- her wing- she guided her past her bowing court that included a tall white-gold-haired man- and she was reminded of how much she enjoyed seeing his crown tipped to her feet.

  
  
  


After a thorough retelling of the just passed events and a number of fresh tears shed by Anna, Elsa had led the Princess into her chambers and, after making sure she was tucked snuggly into bed to rest and Ser Lierwell and his squire (who was also one of Elsa’s returning bannermen), Jon Payrelle- the youngest son of the high family that Lorded over the Stone Keep in The Arm- was posted at her chamber door, Elsa retreated to her own chambers, high in the Tower of the King. It was a room that was honestly too big for her alone as, of course, she was expected to fill it with a husband- a task she had set in motion in The South. 

Of all the Southgaard sons, Arren was the cleanest  _ looking  _ with the shortest hair and third sharpest nose, she had no read on his character but as the second oldest and seven years her senior, she prayed he’d mostly let her keep to herself as she had done for years.

Originally, she had planned to rule until she married Anna to a worthy husband and let her take over furthering the Ardelle family with children that Elsa could call nieces and nephews. But well devised plans had a way of falling through before they were ready and so in an effort to strengthen bonds to The South Elsa had bargained her own hand in order to get Anna a younger suitor, and the youngest son, Anna’s same age, was Hans Southgaard. 

If she were lucky, Anna and Hans would forge a strong and trusting relationship that would eventually further their family, and if Elsa drank the tea of Barrencrone, she would be unable to even carry any of Arren’s children- and if  _ he _ were lucky, being King even without his own sons would be enough.

Elsa pondered on how she would tell Anna of her suitor in The South over the pile of parchment that had accumulated on her desk in the time she had been away. She was in the middle of absently signing another trade declaration- this one sending twice as much grain that came into Aren Fell from the Sunder to Swanton Hold for the coming winter- when a knock sounded at her door. Since her Steward rode with the rest of her company that were yet to return, Ser Qen kept her door, and he came in to announce her visitor upon her verbal cue to enter. She looked up from scratching her name in ink, more carelessly than usual, to instantly feel her throat catch fire at who was behind him, “Your Grace, Master Ingar.” Ser Qen was a slave to titles and, unlike many in the Queen’s court, he insisted on naming one of Ingar’s. He bowed after she lay down her quill and leant back in her high-back chair and with the snap of the door closing, they were alone in the room.

Elsa was the first to speak after an entire minute passed, Ingar had sat in the chair on the other side of her desk and by will of her gesture, he had poured himself a cup of wine, “I pity the ear subjected to you since mine has been too far to hear- I suspect I should thank Lord Robyn for his duty on that matter.” It was true that despite how she despised his company, she was forced to keep it and play host to the words that spilt from lips and lungs that should’ve been full of water if old plans lasted.

He drew back from the cup at his lip which quirked into a little smirk, “I prefer the ear of my  _ sister _ , Anna, over both yours and his.”

“She doesn’t need to be burdened by your whispers.”

Ingar’s emptied cup came down on the table, “The  _ burden _ of which may have been the only thing protecting her in your absence.”

“Protecting her from what?” 

“The same fate as your mother.” Elsa could’ve had his head ripped from his body at that alone. The image of that great, honey-eyed woman unburdening his head from his shoulders and those same parts hanging on the wall tempted her all too much for a second- but she repressed them for the moment, promising herself to call upon them again that night, as she’d undoubtedly spend it staring at her canopy.

“If you enjoy filling my sister’s head with dreams of some giant slashing her throat then perhaps I should make good on my mother’s wish to have your own cut while you sleep.”

“Ah- of course your mother would have wished someone else to spill my blood. There’s not a lot of honor in such a sentence, is there?”

She crossed her arms, only to uncross them again to lay them along the arms of the chair, “Besides the fact that an honourable sentence is more than you deserve- what do you want?”

Ingar was quick to stop playing his game, “To know of your plans regarding the Southgaards-  _ Lords _ , I know, but no one- certainly not you- would want to go there free of crucial reason.”

“I don’t recall seeking your permission on where I go and whom I see.” She stood up, nonchalant and calling on her power to remain calm when delivering threats, “And shall I hear no more of your whispering to the Princess, I may see mercy in allowing you to marry.” Elsa was unsure if Ingar wanted to be married at all- but regardless of  _ if _ and  _ who _ , she held all of the power in choosing him. And as he was a bastard, he would not use the Ardelle name ever again, taking then the name of his bride. She took some enjoyment from the souring of his smirk, “And if I do so much as catch rumor of you by her ear, consider your God and pride forsaken as I’ll cut your throat myself.”

Ingar, like herself, had been taught to grin through threats- raised by the same man meant that many of her lessons had been taught to him too- but she was certain of it’s impact as he instead raised a brow at her, “My God?”

“The only one that has ever smiled upon you: Anna.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops this one took a hot minute but finally! the beginnings of the Ingar and Elsa showdown!!  
> I loved writing their exchange so much and I really hope that this chapter over all made up for however long it's taken me to write and finish x  
> thanks for reading as always!!


	18. Other Waters

Lord Rikaard Reynedire was not known for his hospitality. He was a man that reminded Hans too much of his own grey, weathered father. But unlike the late Southgaard procession for Queen Elsa, Lord Rikaard did not call on his Lady wife or any of his bear-like children to greet the Southern brothers as they passed through his hold. 

_ ‘If I were king,’ _ Hans thought as he studied the empty look on Arren’s cold face as he talked bluntly to the Lord,  _ ‘the first thing I’d do is fill a wall of spikes with the heads of men like Rikaard.’ _ Hans may not have mentally voiced Arren’s head to join the Lord’s head on the hypothetical wall, but it would not have looked out of place there.

“The Queen passed through my gates not a full moon ago, now you two boys?” Lord Rikaard’s voice was rougher than the sand-like skin on his face- it was no wonder why all his children were of different women, he was a terrible man to be bonded to.

All his children were true born- bastards were hardly a Southerner’s way (regardless of what his own mother saw him as)- but they were all still half to each other. Hans had never seen any of them apart from the eldest, Sarisa Reynedire. She was as wild and dark as The Bear Woods that Tarnton’s stone walls held back- her younger brothers were surely wilder and darker. Tall and sculpted, with red hair and grey eyes, she was beautiful, and a part of him that held onto boyhood still harbored the childish infatuation he had for her. He could trace that feeling back to when the Reynedires visited Southwake many, many years ago. 

He never asked, but he had no doubts that his father would never even agree to bethrothement. But he had since mostly outgrown the follies of immature fancy and it was all for the better. 

Hans had better prospects now.

Arren nodded, his surface unstirred, “The Queen herself had called for the both of us to follow her North to Aren Fell.”

“With so many men?” it was true that the men that traveled with Hans and Arren accounted to almost twice the size of the Queen’s party, but as boring as Arren was, he was not daft. Word found its way in The South as easily as it did between fishwives, and the to-be King was not about to take chances regarding his own security.

Arren’s lie was smooth with ease, “New recruits for the Queen’s service.”

“ _ Recruits _ ? What for- Gods, not another war.” 

Hans stepped in, “You’ve forgotten already the arms the North has taken recently with the Queen’s family?” 

Lord Rikaard looked at him. Eyes darting to Hans’ gloved hands. Hans crossed them behind his back, under the dark blue cloak that hung from his shoulders.

The Lord chuckled, flashing teeth as grey as the walls that surrounded him, “It talks.” mocking astoundment. He turned back to Arren, “The North is my enemy too,  _ boy _ . But they and their savage likes haven’t been this far South in years. You’d both do better to stay in your palace by the sea and let them squabble in bloody feud up there.”

Hans knew how to brush by insults, he’d been treated far worse than words alone- but Arren’s jaw clenched beside him, words coming through a pinched grin and grinding teeth. The lie had turned into a reminder, “You forget your oath,  _ old man _ ? To my family that you are  _ below _ ?” 

“By name and title perhaps- but I am your uncle by marriage.”

And he was. The last time that Sarisa had been in Southwake was for the wedding between Teya Krey to the widowed Lord Rikaard. Teya Krey was sister to Sofie Southgaard, Han’s mother. Teya had died on the birthing bed and Rikaard had married again.

“Uncle or not, should there be any whisper of a war- you and your sons will be called to fight in the crown’s army.” Arren waved Hans to take his side and leave.

But Hans was struck with confidence as he added, “ _ If _ you can even make it that far North.”

Lord Rikaard visibly bristled, face turning a redder grey, “ _ Careful boy _ -”

Arren raised a hand to Hans, a sign that he was officially being told to shut his mouth lest he lose more fingers.He spoke to the Lord with calm venom, “If you are unwilling to remain a loyal house then I’d demand your eldest son as ward here and now and foster him to the bastard prince in Aren Fell.”

Rikaard was pacified with that. Until a smug look took him again, and he bowed, “I’d never deny you of your right to power- or rather your father’s power that will be your  _ brother’s _ soon enough- but if it’s my boy you want- take him.” He swept a bony arm in motion to the direction of The Bear Woods beyond his walls, “Ungrateful shit’s out there somewhere. Though I doubt he’d let you take him.” 

He clapped his hands after a silent moment between the three, “I suppose I should be seeing you boys out then, come on.” He spoke gruffly and tiredly, already shuffling past them.

_ ‘Good.’  _ Hans thought. He hated being there as much as he hated his own home; and by the visible slacking in Arren’s shoulders, he must’ve felt similarly.

  
  


When they both reunited with the rest of their Southern party on the other side of Tarnton Hold’s walls Arren grabbed Hans by the collar of his jacket before he could take his horse from the groom. He all but snarled in his face, “You’re lucky you have my blood, Hans- else I’d have run you through right in front of the corpse Lord.”

Arren let go of him with a rough shove and spared no time in snatching his horse from the groom and mounting it once again. Hans was more efficient this time as he too mounted his horse and kept Arren’s pace, trotting through the winding road that bent to the will of The Bear Woods and the scatterings of peasant boardings and inns.

Once he was beside his brother he spoke, “You really think his son is in those woods?”

Arren eyed him with warning but answered him civilly anyway, “No. Not at all. He was lying- If those woods were survivable then we’d own them and build in them.”

Perhaps his brother was beginning to see him as a more worthy ally. Like Lars did, not hesitant on punching him where there was any scrap of reason, but more… brotherly. 

Hans supposed it was a good thing; a more than indifferent relationship between them strengthened their power on the thrones- they’d never love each other, that he knew. But there was a game to be played and he was sure that Arren  _ knew _ he could play it just as well as he. “As the Ardelle’s would the Winterwoods?” Hans offered.

“Exactly.” Arren nodded, “They may be Bear Woods- but they are home to much more- you remember what happened to Johan.” 

_ Lars dumped the boy in front of their father, his bloodied hands steadying himself against the stone floor. Henrik looked down in concerned horror at his boy of only fifteen. Earling was in tears and pulling at his mother’s skirts at the sight. _

_ Henrik grabbed Johan by the shoulders and pulled him up to his knees before him. The blood was also smeared across the front of his jerkin, soaked his tunic sleeves to the elbow- and messiest around his mouth. His father tried to talk to him but Hans had forgotten what he said, deaf to all but the sight before him. Johan was inconsolable, eyes rolling back and absent, rolling forward and blinking- he was muttering too.  _

There were a few things though, some words, that Hans  _ did _ remember from that day:

_ “You left Martin out there?!” _

_ …  _

_ “We couldn’t see them anywhere!” _

_ …  _

_ “... bigger than a bear…”  _

_ …  _

_ “blood.” _

Yet despite all that- Hans’ father had plainly and bluntly stated that he’d rather marry Johan to the Princess than he. A boy driven to unknown madness by what lay behind trees and under roots to the point that he’d seen- or  _ seen to- _ the death of his twin brother; such a boy was still better suited to crown than a boy born with some extra extremities. Birth versus circumstance- will of Gods versus act of Gods- punishment versus revenge. 

“I remember.” Hans muttered. 

“Reynedires don’t die easy but then again, the same is said about us.” Hans didn’t realise Arren’s laboured breathing until it evened as the treeline of The Bear Woods opened up again and the landscape was more than looming leaves and eyed bark.

They were still in the Southern domain but The Waist was a short horizon away. And beyond the wester valleys where the Red Waste River flowed through Sunder- Aren Fell was but a step away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is lacking in good drama but I promise the next is spicer!   
> It was a strange one to write because Arren is equally an allusive character to write interactions with as he is to envision the inner thoughts of. But all in all the point that i may not have illustrated brilliantly is that everyone in the south sucks and while Hans despises Arren, he knows they're gonna have to get along in order to have full power in Aren Fell.
> 
> thanks loads to those wonderful readers who are sticking around me and this trash story! This story wouldn't be still going without you x   
> thanks for reading :)


	19. Bedside

The white streak, now an accepted ornament in her hair, was swept over her freckled shoulder as she swung her legs off the bed and flexed the stiffness in her muscles. She did not startle at the shift of weight behind her nor at the pair of cold hands that came to the nape of her neck.

Familiar fingers prodded at the knots under her skin and she gave way to a soft sigh as he spoke to her, “If anyone should be rigid with fear, princess, it is I- not you.” His voice was softer than the last time she heard it, weeks ago when he had left his post to accompany his lord knight and Queen on her journey to The South. While it had always been soft and smooth like the still, black water of the little pond in the Godswood of the Aren Fell castle- it was more now, like the folds of dark velvet and silk that she found a new comfort between- and his voice and arms encompassed her so. Anna made a note to thank whichever God saw to his soft voice next time she visited the Godswood or the Temple- she needed it now more than ever. 

“And what do you fear?” She asked him, head craning over her shoulder to get a look at him. Soft skin moulded to strong lines across the landscape that was his face- his cheeks were hills with peaks that rimmed little pools of murky green and the jut of his button nose, like a crest from which the balance of his face rested. And atop his forehead sat a shaggy nest of black curls that swayed and lurched like the forest trees in the winds of winter as he nodded and walked and--  _ well _ .

His lips curled, “A number of things-” the tension that suffocated the air was cut by the lilt in his voice. It made her smile, he continued, “the beasts of the Winterwoods, the Stormwaters that surround The Arm, my Lord father-  _ but, _ ” he leant forwards to kiss the nakedness of her shoulder, “I am mostly scared of your Queen sister.”

Anna had only called him to fill the coldness in her bed twice before; a sin, he had taken her maidenhood- dishonoured her, deflowered her, spoiled her- and of all things she had asked him to return. She was meant to be ashamed and if her father were still alive- or if anyone knew- they would both be tried for The Wall before Gods and men. But her sister was the Queen, and ,while she was ignorant to the nights the flowering knight spent with her little sister, Elsa had never denied her anything within the rights of men.  _ However _ , premarital fornication-  _ Especially in their prominent, fragile family _ \- was no mere sin. 

_ She didn't even want to think of what Ingar would do if he found out. _

So Anna did everything to keep her sinning under the cover of candlelight where all that was cast were the vaguings of shadows that ,if seen, would be impossible to decipher, where the act would be nothing more than the lingering smell of a spent wick and the poolings of solid wax by morning. 

He was one of her only friends in Aren Fell, so it would be stupid to risk that which would surely earn him a place on The Wall. And while Anna was fond of him, virgin to the complexities of _real_ love- she could not resist a moment spent in his arms, under his body, for he filled more than the coldness in her bed; for such a moment made all her other thoughts as trivial as the candles that burned in the background.

Anna blushed under the caress of his lips, surprised at herself that she could retain such innocence when  _ she  _ was the one who spent it away so boldly, “None of my sister’s lords or servants have the power to see through wooden doors or stone walls, Jon.” She finally stood up, plucking her cotton nightgown from its discarded place, and secured it to her body once again with the two ties that closed it’s wrapped front- a fastening style she wore on her outer clothing too- one at her collarbone, the other on her left hip. 

Anna sauntered over to her dressing table and lifted her mother’s mirror to check the white in her hair-  _ it was still there _ . The mirror felt heavier than usual in her hand but she ignored the sensation, instead, turning it so that she could peek at Jon’s naked body as it left the shape of her bed and wandered somewhere behind her. Doubt played in his movements so she tried to subside them, “Elsa wouldn’t hurt you, I wouldn’t let her.”  _ A lie _ .

He laughed quietly, consciously, “I almost pissed myself when she called for her horse and me at Tarnton Hold.”

“She called for  _ you _ ?” Anna turned around then, noticing the glass of pink wine he had poured himself- and how the candle he was nearest to made his skin glow white, the coarse hairs that ran from his chest to navel and thickened around his cock highlighted with a similar glow.

He poured a second glass, “The Queen called in her banners to ride back to Aren Fell after she received word from you that--” Jon sighed, carrying the glass to her. 

He joined the direction of her eyes, out the window that her dressing table sat under and to the dark picture of night in Aren Fell. Anna’s chambers, unlike her mother who preferred the view of the fjord mouth that opened to The Red Sea and the cliff edge that fell to those waters right under her window, overlooked the city of Aren Fell. From this place one could see the Heart Tree in the Godswood, it’s red leaves hadn’t fallen for many years but the coming winter would turn them black in time and they would scatter to the ground like ash. But Anna preferred to look beyond the walls and gardens in the bounds of the castle, to the roads and alleys of the city-  _ her city _ . There was the dome of the Temple, surrounded by six columns- three for each God, she supposed; the King’s Way did not divide the city into equal sides, rather the side closest to the bay of the fjord and Fishmonger’s Square contained a third of the buildings and houses of Aren Fell. On the other side, beyond the Temple and it’s hill was the rest, the Street of Iron and Steel near Tailor’s Hook, and past that, Beggar’s Corner where the Crooked Road found its way back to the Crown’s Gate where the King’s Way ended and buildings and walls faded into mountains and the Winterwoods' edge lay.

The smell and the sound of the city below used to put her at ease, its noise was a welcome distraction to a confusing childhood. But now Anna understood why her late mother must’ve preferred the spire farthest from the city’s view. 

Anna took the glass that Jon offered her and downed half of it’s contents in one gulp, “Did you see your brother at all while you were South? What was his name again?”

Jon let her change the subject- not just because she was his Princess but because he understood her grief, both of his parents, Lord and Lady Payrelle of The Arm had died. His father, Lord Errock was killed by Northerners during the last war, his mother, Lady Marya, went years later as she gave birth to Jon- leaving his eldest brother, Derrock (only a boy at the time) to assume the Lord’s title. They were years dead now but in truth, death didn’t ever go away, time only made its echo quieter. 

Jon nodded, tendrils of hair bobbing with him, “Aye, Kartis.” then he shook his head, “I didn’t see him-- haven’t since he left home at Peakhold. I hardly remember what he looked like apart from his hair- golden, ‘The Sun in The Arm’ is what they called him… That and his one black eye.”

The description was ambiguous but it unsettled her all the same, “Black eye?” 

He watched her take another sip, “As black as the sand in The South- it always frightened me; but I’d rather spend the rest of my days staring into it than facing the Queen's justice.”

  
  


_ Anna’s eyes flicked open, her whole body writhing with a burning sensation. The rings of fire were back but there was solidity in their number this time- three. _

_ She wasn’t naked this time. Her pink and bubbling, boiled raw skin was wrapped in the folds of flames that clung to her like a dress, ash falling from her like a train. The whiteness in her hair had spread, wisps of his fluttering in her vision, and it too left an ashy rain that fell to the rocks under her bare feet.  _

_ No, less like ash- like snow. _

_ There was no smell of poppy tea, no sweat that gathered to the core of her belly. The only ripple of life was the heated wave from the fire that turned her vision to a blur and stung her eyes- everything else was still and dead; even the flames themselves looked too practiced in each flicker and lick to be real. _

_ But they were. Anna touched them with splotched fingers. The fire ignited her skin, angry boils popping like the broth of a wretched stew.  _

_ She had no desire to step through the flames this time, the centre of the smallest ring would not burn her so that was where she sat. Without a doubt she’d see the hall of bodies or the chanting rows of them on the other side when her dream would force her to.  _

_ They didn’t come. They didn’t chant. _

_ Instead, what stepped through the flames to loom over her body that was tucked into a cowardly crouch was a figure she half recognised. _

_ A tall woman with thick, long hair that shifted from a deep brown to golden in the light’s cast. Eyes so bright they were almost all white- ‘A ghost?’ Anna thought.  _

_ Many each had their own description of ghosts- some said they were fleshed just like man but empty on the inside. Others said they could not be seen at all, that they were clouds in mirrors- echoes of men that didn’t die like the Gods planned. _

_ But Anna knew this woman, her face triggered memories that she had been working to suppress, and as she got closer to little, burnt Anna, she held her hand out, “child.” her voice was much more familiar than her strange youthful face. _

_ Anna did not know what compelled her in that very moment to do so, but she took the hand of the figure and let herself be pulled to her scathing feet.  _ _ Once on her feet and at eye level with the woman before her, a word left her with the rest of the air in her body, “mother?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooooooo hot tea!  
> As I said, I was working to the drama in this chapter than the last so that why I'm uploading it this soon!!  
> The story unfoldsssss and ee, things are only gonna get more serious so I hope that's alright with you lovelies xx
> 
> thanks for reading!!!


	20. Waking Storm

The tavern they found on the skirts of the town called Jadeen was large and full and inviting. Its inner warmth of promised fire and sweet wines called them out of the storm that rolled in over their heads. 

None of them had the coin to stay the night or fill themselves with food or the drink that owned the smell, but they found a bench in the corner and snagged some empty tankards from a vacant table to look like patrons. In the business of the customers, they were overlooked.

Ryder emptied a pocket full of ash-black rabbit chunks on the table which they all took share from, Diina coaxing Mortu to eat, who was wandering in and out of consciousness. 

Kristoff whispered words of their mother-tongue, “ **Where are we to go next? From the looks of the near-land we’re two days from another forest.** ”

Maren spat into her tankard, “ **Gods know how far true South is from there. And with your brother getting worse the farther he goes what’s the trouble?** ”

Ryder bristled at that, he went to raise his voice but Kristoff shushed him. So instead, he chuckled and screwed his face up as he mocked his sister, “ **_Think of the babies, Ryder, think of mother, Ryder_ ** **\- are you so quick to abandon all you fight for because the South may be further than we thought?** ”

“ **I’m thinking of more than crippled babes and our frail mother, I’m thinking of** **_us- our people, our blood, our land_ ** **\- we don’t know what winter will be down here, if we don’t go back now, we might not at all.** ” 

Diina looked at Kristoff as the siblings across from them continued to bite at each other, Mortu sat between them. Kristoff saw each of his sisters in her at once, Livili’s strength, Maarja’s fight, Isa’s reason, Nora’s passion- Diina had it all, “ **We can’t go back home.** ” 

Kristoff thought of his oldest sister, headstrong and shouldering through personal trials that were bigger than anything he hoped to ever know- he thought of her and her equally strong twin, how he remembered they’d glower at him and Diina when they got into trouble. Much simpler trouble it had been.

Kristoff didn’t know what he thought was right but his concern for his brother dictated his words, “ **Aye but Mortu-** ”

Maren hauled herself back in her chair and stomped off without much more to be said.

Kristoff continued his thoughts to Diina, “ **We have to protect Mortu. If Maren wants to go back North, she can take him home safe so we...** ” 

_Could continue into unsafety._

“ **Our party grows smaller by the day.** ” Ryder lamented to his empty cup. Then, his demeanor changed- as if only by saying the words himself he was condemning them all. Mortu was shivering, eyes blinking and rolling as he fought his way back into consciousness. Ryder watched him as he had come too many times before, “ **We can’t send Mortu back North,** **_Gods_ ** **\- he is easily the strongest of all of us.** ”

Truth be, Kristoff knew of the shadows of affection that the man across from him had for his brother. But he ignored it.

Spiritwalking taxed as much as dreaming did to Livili and Jarri, they both led plentiful lives despite the wanderings and hauntings, both could marry and lead families.

But Mortu needed more than vows- and Ryder was younger than he, easily distracted with the baits of Mortu’s physical capability; he would not see just how much care his mind required. 

So Kristoff shot him down, hastily with a slight voice to avoid the ears of a young woman who was approaching their table, “ **Mortu can’t fight if he is lost in his own body.** ” 

“Is he in need of care?” She was slight, smaller than women were in the North, with short, curly hair and an embellished brooch on her shawl that resounded with a memory, “I’m quite well-trained in tending to broken men.”

Ryder didn’t know much of what the girl had just said but he knew how to read eyes- and the seductive suggestion in hers screamed like fire on ice. He shook his head, “No.”

There was more that burned to be expressed on his lips but, luckily, he had the sense to only say what he knew.

“Water?,” Kristoff asked her, though her dress didn’t suggest she was a serving girl, “please.”

She nodded, smiling at him with the same appreciative glance she gave his brother. 

Once the girl had left their table, he noticed the way that Diina’s hand had come to grip at Mortu’s sleeve. 

“ **_Når alt er tapt, blir alt funnet_ ** **.** ” Mortu rasped. He tethered himself to the waking world with a cough and then he was as present as the rest of them.

Diina grasped his arm, “ **Dear brother, what have you seen?** ”

“ **What did you say?** ” Kristoff asked, incredulous.

He recognised it as an ancient song line of language that hadn’t been spoken in the North for generations. Legend to be the song of Karnn; scheming wish granters that lived inside Heart trees. 

Mortu swallowed and laughed once, nervously, “ **The South rides North, sister.** ”

“ **How many?** ” Ryder asked. It was clear that Mortu’s waking words only piqued Kristoff’s own curiosity. 

He shrugged in response, “ **Not many- a small party.** ” 

“ **Do you think they carry their secrets with them? Any** **_women_ ** **?** ” Diina ventured. 

Mortu shook his head, no, eyes cast only to the table before him. The Stolen Body was not with them, their long journey remained.

The girl found her way back to them, now with a little more sway to her step as she noticed her target had woken. 

“Water.” she poured Mortu a glass first, leaning over the table to deposit it directly to him. Then she poured out four more glasses. “And,” once they had skulled down the water she dropped a key on wood, “you can all take my room for your rest.”

Ryder, Mortu and Diina eyed the iron object wearlilly as the girl bowed and turned to leave them.

Kristoff was faster, he pulled out of his seat and outmatched her stride, gripping her shoulder for attention, “You cannot give us your room.”

It must’ve been a trick, Kristoff thought. The people South of the Winterwoods had only been vengeful and secretive. Surely this woman would use this against them in the morning, accuse them of all sorts of crime when they were found in her room- and then they’d all be where they started: shackled in a dungeon.

But she smiled up at him through her fine lashes, “It is of no loss to me, I leave at dawn by Queen’s order.”

His fingers came up of their own accord, tracing her brooch and the little fox there- it clicked into place, “You’re in the Queen’s court?” 

The woman inspired under his gaze, the water in her pitcher giving away her subtle shuddering. She offered him her hand, “Marion, the Queen’s handmaiden.”

  
  
  


“ **She doesn’t want to be found**.” Ryder sighed, closing the door securely behind him. They had taken Marion on her kind offer and crammed themselves in her one bed room. Mortu was already asleep on the little bed, Diina petched by his side. 

Kristoff stood and checked the door himself, “ **She’ll find us in the morning.** ”

Ryder scoffed, sitting on the other side of Mortu, his exhaustion exposed in his voice, “ **If she hasn’t already left for the North.** ” 

  
  


“ **I’ve been thinking about mother.** ” Diina croaked. Ryder and Mortu were fast asleep behind her. “ **I can’t stop actually.** ”

He looked up at her from his place on the floor. All he saw was his little sister, tears pooling at the corner of her eyes. “ **I have no doubt she thinks of us too.** ” Kristoff opened his arms and she scurried off the bedside and into his side. 

“ **What about Jarri- he has his wife and a babe on the way, Livili has her mountains, Isa is in Andifold and Nora is lost in her own dreams…** ” 

Kristoff wrapped her close against himself, “ **You remember what father used to tell us,** ” he smoothed a hand over her bright hair, “ **when he took us on his hunts and we’d ask him why he always sent the animals to death with a prayer.** ”

Diina sniffed, looking up to the haybed at her brother, “ **He said that every living thing is united by blood. That even--**

_“_ **_\-- the smallest animals and the trees that haven’t spoken for hundreds of years are connected to each other in ways we might never understand._ ** _”_

 _“_ **_But we kill them, father._ ** _” Diina crouched to look into the eyes of the young stag, “_ **_We kill what we are connected to?_ ** _”_

 _Bjarg smiled, hauling the stag onto his back by its antlers. “_ **_Look at the water here, you too, Kristoff._ ** _” He trod to a spot where the dappled sunlight through the trees had nursed a small pool of melted snow._

_Kristoff gathered up the pebbles he was enamoured with and dumped them in his little pouch. Racing to catch up with them._

_“_ **_Water, ice water is from the Mother and the Ghost. See how it is born of fire,_ ** _” He pointed to the sun, “_ **_and ice._ ** _”_

 _Diina dipped a finger in the water, pulling back in shock, “_ **_It’s cold!_ ** _”_

 _Bjarg chuckled and ruffled her head, disturbing her hood until it fell back on her shoulders, “_ **_Some things were never meant to get along, like little fingers and cold water._ ** _” He motioned for Kristoff to come closer. “_ **_Show me what stones you found, son._ ** _”_

_Kristoff blinked then opened the string of his pouch, pulling out a handful of his little prizes._

_Bjarg looked them over and pointed to a rough and clouded one, “_ **_Throw that one in the water._ ** _”_

 _When Kristoff did, the boring stone cleared and glittered with an opalised core at the bottom of the pool. “_ **_And other things,_ ** _” Bjarg reached into the ice water and scooped up the stone, “_ **_were made for each other._ ** _”_

_But when the stone left the water, it reverted to its gritty surface and dark colour. Kristoff frowned at his father._

_“_ **_For us to live, we take what we need… and sometimes nature takes back from us. What the Gods call balance, we name--_ ** _”_

“ **\--** **_sacrifice_ ** **.** ”

Kristoff kissed her forehead, “ **I’ve been thinking: we’ve done enough of the sacrificing haven’t we?** ”

She hummed, and thumbed the tears from her eyes. 

Just when Diina’s head fell in defeat by tire to Kristoff’s shoulder, there was a soft knock at the door.

After he carefully relocated Diina’s head to the heap of Mortu’s wool coat, Kristoff stood and strode silently to the door.

The handmaiden Marion was on the other side, “Sorry to disturb you.” She clutched at the knit shawl around her shoulders, however, doing little to cover her chest.

He looked over his shoulder, they all lay in deep, earned slumber behind him. And when he cast his eyes over her shoulder for any sign or Maren it was only in vain. “What is it?” he breathed.

“I need you.” She told him, hurried and hushed. “ _now._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so biggggg apologies are in order for this one: it took forever for me to get through writing this one because honestly I hated the direction of it and even though I knew what I wanted to happen, it felt like a huge chore to actually do.  
> I'm planning to get back into my atoiab groove now (thanks to that Jarri x ina side story) and hopefully I can update again soon!
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this one and forgive me for taking forever and a day to give it to you absolutely wonderful people!! xx

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Written in Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24010216) by [Rohirrim_Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohirrim_Writer/pseuds/Rohirrim_Writer)




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